The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

 

It's apt that this novel contains the world "stories" in its title, in the plural, because this novel contains many stories. Most of those stories pick up somewhere after their beginning, and most of those stories drop off somewhere before their ending, and they branch off each other in an almost fractal concatenation, occasionally merging with or burying themselves inside others. Eventually the whole thing kinda runs out of forward momentum and it slows to a halt like some sort of inland delta--or as an alternative metaphor, collapses under its own weight.