Life after Life

McCorkle's LIFE AFTER LIFE was originally published in April 2013, the same month as Kate Atkinson's book by the same title. Though McCorkle's book is smaller in scope and ambition, it is equal to Atkinson's in quality.

An ensemble of characters narrates in the third person. We are introduced, first, to Joanna, a hospice worker who helps ease people into death, and then writes about them in a notebook to remember them. (Her journal entries are included, as are the brief final thoughts, memories, or flashbacks of the dying.)

Joanna moved back to her hometown of Fulton, NC, before her father's death, and now runs the family business and volunteers at Pine Haven. Many of the novel's main characters are connected with Pine Haven, either as show more residents, frequent visitors, or employees. There is Sadie, who taught third grade and who believes everyone is really eight years old at heart; Abby, the son of Joanna's childhood best friend Ben, who has an unhappy life at home and often comes to visit Sadie; Rachel Silverman, who came down from Boston for reasons known only to herself; Stanley Stone, who acts as if he has dementia in order to encourage his son Ned to live his own life; Toby Tyler, a cheerful lesbian; and C.J., a young beautician with a three-year-old son. Kendra, Ben's appalling wife and Abby's mother, also takes a turn (I suspect she is the character the author refers to as "completely unredeemable" in the back matter.)

So rarely do I finish a book and wish there was more. I did wish for more at the end of LIFE AFTER LIFE, not because it was incomplete, but simply because I wanted to know. I would have liked to hear Ben's perspective, and known more about his and Joanna's history together. I like to think that the crime committed near the end of the story would have been solved, and the culprit brought to justice; I would like to know that Abby will be okay. The reader must make these decisions, though, for the author leaves her characters' lives open-ended.

Overall, this is a beautiful book, with fully-realized characters of every age - another rare thing. I highly recommend it.

Quotes

Epigraph:
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. -Thornton Wilder

The pain of losing people you love is the price of the ticket for getting to know them at all. (Sadie, 26)

And for the first time I saw him for what he really was, a bridge between two places - the past and the present - the before and the after. The world I shared with my parents and the one I have all alone. (Joanna's notebook, 77)

Why does she remember such things, bits of memories popping in like little commercials of another time? (Rachel, 125)

...and if she had the chance to do it all over again, she would not ask for a different life at all. She has loved her life. But what she would ask is to be born into a different world; she would ask for an honest and accepting world. (Toby, 200)

One day you are independent and thriving and then you are bedridden and surrounded by the smells and sounds of those who will never venture outside again and all that falls between the two blurs like the view from a passing train. (Rachel, 204)

"I wish we could zoom from our lives and see the great big picture. It might make more sense." (Rachel, 209)

Places always feel so empty right after someone dies, the sensation of a whole lifetime of people and memories disappearing with that last breath, the air sucked right out of the scene. (Joanna, 263-264)

"It feels like I'm alive again...We live days and weeks and months and years with so little awareness of life. We wait for the bad things that wake us up and shock our systems. But every now and then, on the most average day, it occurs to you that this is it. This is all there is." (Rachel, 293) show less

Spoiler alert -- don't read the third paragraph if you haven't read the book!

My first instinct when I got to the end of this book was to throw it across the room. But since I read a digital ARC, I thought better of it. I wanted to throw the book, not my iPad. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED this book. McCorkle made me feel real emotions. REAL, ya'll.

While the events of the book only cover a couple of days, you get each characters story. You love some, you despise some, and some you want to hug. And in the end you realize that life isn't always easy, but it goes on. We lose people around us, but they live on in our memory.

I desperately need to discuss the end with someone. C.J. I just can't. I was so shocked and devastated by that ending. show more As a character, I felt like she deserved more and that's part of why this is 4-stars and not 5. I just HATED how that happened. However, if the doctor DOES leave his wife for Kendra then...well...those two deserve each other.

While I felt like some stories weren't finished, we got a snapshot of life (and death) in and near Pine Haven. The more you read, the more heartbreaking each story becomes, but also hopeful because there was someone with them: Joanna. Great book.

(And if you think...life in a retirement village? Why would I want to read about that? This book is so much more than that. SO MUCH MORE.) show less

My grandmother lives in an assisted living and nursing facility. Each of the residents has his or her name on the door to their apartment but each time we go and visit, some of the names have changed. It is a sad fact of life, especially in a nursing home setting, that death is a constant. This place is the final home for almost all of its inhabitants. But here in the wrinkle ranch, the old folk's home, the elder shelter, heaven's waiting room, as much as death is a constant presence, life also goes on, a life after life. Jill McCorkle's much anticipated new novel, Life After Life, is set in just such a place, examining life, death, and the human spirit.


Told in vignette-style stories, the novel focuses on the lives and deaths of the show more residents, their deceased loved ones, and the staff of Pine Haven Retirement Facility in small town North Carolina. And contrary to popular belief about nursing homes, life at the Pine Haven is not just a monotonous wait for death. There are the same rivalries and friendships inside its walls that add spice to life outside the home. There are contentious residents, sweetly accepting residents, conniving residents, wise residents, angry residents, and contented residents. Their sojourn in the nursing home doesn't change who they are fundamentally. In many cases, in fact, it distills this essential being, clarifying and sharpening it.


Sadie, a former third grade teacher who taught most of the residents of the town at one time or another, has started a thriving business creating photographs that place her fellow residents all over the world and in the midst of adventures they never took. She knows much of what goes on in the nursing home and offers well-considered, sage advice to those who ask. Rachel, an outsider to the area, harbors a secret she clutches to her heart and which brought her from Boston to this small piece of North Carolina. Stanley is a crotchety old man who seemingly slips in and out of dementia, one moment lucid and courtly and the next shouting and offensive. Joanna is a volunteer at the home who spends her time there sitting with the dying, chronicling people's last words, final moments, and the essence of who they were. She records her observations in her notebook, preserving the memory of each person, keeping them from being forgotten, bearing witness to their life and their death. CJ is a young, tattooed and pierced single mom who has lived a tough life. Best friends with Joanne, she works as Pine Haven's beautician as she tries to build a better life for her little boy. Abby is a lonely child who is all but neglected at home in the wake of her parents' growing unhappiness and anger and is bullied or ignored at school. Her mother is nasty and narcissistic while her father is blind to her emotional neglect so she escapes to Sadie's room and the caring she finds there whenever she can.


The short chapters, told from the perspective of the large ensemble cast, the pages from Joanna's notebook, and the final thoughts of the dying, all build an exquisite character driven novel about secrets and self and the facades we all present to the rest of the world. It's a thought-provoking work about death and letting go but also about life and the living of it right up until the very end. The narrative slowly reveals the stories of each of the characters, what life events created them, and why each of them, resident or not, made his or her way to the nursing home. As ever, McCorkle's writing is magnificent and her characters are just quirky enough to be completely human. There is a poignancy here, as might be expected in a novel so closely tied to the end of life, but it also offers the quiet solace of the eternal, especially through the final, unspoken but conscious thoughts of the dying. Life After Life is understated, reflective, and emotionally pitch perfect until the oddly incongruous and inexplicable ending. It just doesn't fit with the tone of the rest of the novel. Over all though, this was a lovely and incredibly enjoyable read despite the unfortunate ending. It is, generally, a novel to be savored. show less

It's an odd quirk of the publishing world that Jill McCorkle's book, Life After Life was released just a week before Kate Atkinson's book by the same name. I hope that the confusion doesn't cause McCorkle's book to be overlooked.

The author uses the setting of a multi-stage retirement home of Pine Haven in Fulton, North Carolina as a back drop similar to Thornton Wilder's Our Town. The chapters are mostly written in differing points of view of the various characters with a delightful and well drawn range of personalities.

There are several narrative threads in the book:
One deals with Joanna and C.J. Joanna, in her mid-40's, is a native of Fulton who left (escaped) town in her late teens and has returned home after three marriages to care show more for her dying father. Her mantra is "the longest and most expensive journey you will ever make is the one to yourself". Her job at Pine Haven is a hospice worker who serves as "a bridge between two places - the past and the present -- the before and the after." Her notebook pages about those she has cared for appear in the book, often followed by a short narrative in the voice of the deceased, a bit like Spoon River Anthology.

Joanna is friend and mentor to C.J. a 26 year old "punk, pierced, and tattooed with a baby boy whose father she won't dicuss" who works at Pine Haven as a beautician. She does hair, manicures, and pedicures in a loving way. C.J.'s life has been hard, including her mother's suicide when she was still in school. Joanna and C.J. have shared their stories, many (tho' not all) of their secrets including an exchange about "if anything ever happens to me".....

Another thread deals with Abby, a 12 year old girl who is suffering the loss of her dog, Dollbaby; the effects of a frustrated, selfish mother, Kendra, and an inept "Southern boy" father, Ben. Abby often seeks refuge at Pine Haven, especially with Sadie, the woman who has taught third grade just about everyone in town, and has a business in the nursing home helping to others to realize thwarted dreams.

The remaining cast of characters include:
Stanley, a retired lawyer who carries out his own brand of theatrics in the nursing home for his own reasons, and also knows most of the long time residents of Fulton. Rachel, a retired Jewish lawyer from Massachusetts who has come to Pine Haven to recover the essence of an unfulfilled romance. Toby, a retired high school literature teacher and lesbian. And Marge, the widow of the town judge who keeps a scrapbook of true crime in the region.

The author uses poetic, descriptive language to describe emotions, events and memories. She is a southern woman writer who spent much of her adulthood in New England and this provides keen insight into the characters and culture conveyed in the novel. She is able to convey a Southern sensibility as well as a Northern perspective on that sensibility (mostly through the character of Rachel).

There is a lot packed into this book. It's the kind of story that calls back to the reader long after reaching the end of the story.

Disclosure: I received this book as an Early Reviewers Selection through Library Thing. And though a review is requested as part of the program, the opinion and content of the review is entirely my own. show less

I began reading Life After Life and was not sure that I was going to be able to deal with the subject matter, having lived through my mother's dementia, experiences in assisted living, and ultimately, her passing. The characters in the book make the subject matter more palatable. In fact, McCorkle manages to weave a story that is really as much about life as it is about death. In so doing, she gave me space to ponder the events in my own life in a new context. This was a meaningful book. I know that in the days to come I will be returning to it in my mind. The characters' lives are cleverly intertwined. We are allowed to view a person's life from different vantage points, which I found fascinating. Joanna, a hospice worker, documents show more each passing in her diary, from her viewpoint. Then we are given insight into that particular person's state of mind at the moment of death. We may meet a character in the Pine Haven Estates assisted living facility and form an opinion about them. Yet, later in the book we see them in a completely different context, as they once were, and find greater compassion and understanding for them. There is an endearing thirteen-year-old named Abby, who visits the retirement home daily. Her presence in the book is essential in providing balance. The book deals with family issues, infidelity, insecurity, loss, love, friendship, hope and aging. I am so happy to have read it and am very grateful for the gift of this early reviewer's edition. show less

This book was beautifully written. The characters were skillfully drawn. I felt that McCorkle may have made a misstep or two, literally near the end, but for most of the book she remained true to her intention. Her use of stream of consciousness (I am a fan) was spot on, giving texture to characters and environment. I never say this, as I think too many books are long winded, but this could have used a few more pages.

The title works on several levels – there are stories of lives of characters who have died, recounted by a hospice worker who herself is living a "life after life", and stories of the residents of an assisted living/retirement residence, living a life very different from their pre-retirement ones. This mix of past and present, and multiple voices is initially confusing, but the voices quickly sort themselves out and pull you further in to the novel. I love McCorkle's prose – it doesn't get in the way of the story, and always includes enough humor to leaven what could be a grim topic. My only complaint is the ending, which I won't divulge here. It just seemed to me to come out of left field – it seemed unrelated to the rest of the show more novel, and felt like McCorkle was looking for a fast way to wrap up the book. I would still recommend reading this book for the first nine tenths, which do ring true to me. show less