Life After Life

by Jill McCorkle

Jill McCorkle's first novel in seventeen years is alive with the daily triumphs and challenges of the residents and staff of Pine Haven Estates, a retirement facility, which is now home to a good many of Fulton, North Carolina's older citizens. Among them, third-grade teacher Sadie Randolph, who has taught every child in town and believes we are all eight years old in our hearts; Stanley Stone, once Fulton's most prominent lawyer, now feigning dementia to escape life with his son; Marge Walker, the town's self-appointed conveyor of social status who keeps a scrapbook of every local murder and heinous crime; and Rachel Silverman, recently widowed, whose decision to leave her Massachusetts home and settle in Fulton is a mystery to everyone but her. C. J., the pierced and tattooed young mother who runs the beauty shop, and Joanna, the hospice volunteer who discovers that her path to a good life lies with helping folks achieve good deaths, are two of the staff on whom the residents depend.

McCorkle puts her finger on the pulse of every character's strengths, weaknesses, and secrets. And, as she connects their lives through their present circumstances, their pasts, and, in some cases, through their deaths, she celebrates the blessings and wisdom of later life and infuses this remarkable novel with hope and laughter.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction, Southern, Death

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 26, 2013

About the author

Five of Jill McCorkle's seven previous books have been named New York Times Notables. Winner of the New England Booksellers Award, the Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature, she has taught writing at the University of North Carolina, Bennington College, Tufts University, and Harvard. She lives near Boston with her husband, their two children, several dogs, and a collection of toads.

Reviews

[Connie Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.”
― Jill McCorkle, Life After Life

I had wanted to read this for some time as McCorkle is an author local to me. Then a coworker who visits a rural NC nursing home that I used to work in gave me a copy and said, " These are our folks." So I was so disappointed when I began to read and had no connection, but after setting it aside and picking it up a few weeks later these characters suddenly came alive for me....these were my folks with all their wisdom, faults, regrets and glories.

The writing is beautiful. It almost reads as a collection of short stories as the reader follows the lives of several characters who all have Pine Haven, the nursing center in small town Fulton NC, in common. They come in all ages and places in their lives and their individual stories come to life under McCorkles skilled hand. These are rich characters, flawed characters and very real characters. We can all find a Sadie, Rachel, Joanna and Toby in our lives as well as the other not so likable characters. I particularly liked the relationship between Sadie, facing the end of her life and a young Abby whose whole life was ahead of her., they were more similar than one may assume. What the reader and the characters realize is that we have more in common than we may think....we are all traveling the same road of life, with it's straight a ways, bumps and curves and detours. The excerpts from Joanna's journal were extra special for me as they were followed by the personal narrative of someone's last day of life.

This was funny, sad and heartwarming all at the same time. It makes me want to spend an afternoon back where I used to work, visiting with "old" friends and soaking up their experiences and wisdom. They have so much to teach if we just take the time to listen.

[Constance · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this more until the end. There are several interesting storylines though one is maddenly predictable (Rachel & Stanley). There are some complex characters, especially Joanna who turns her life around after hitting bottom and becomes a hospice worker. Kendra, on the other hand is purely, inexplicably evil and makes life miserable for her tragically sad daughter who finds a second home at Pine Haven. The men fare the worst in this novel, from Ned who can't recover from losing his unborn child, to Joe who is serial cheater and Stanley who assumes a character rather than honestly expressing his feelings. Even Ben who the reader has sympathy for, is ruined by making a pass at CJ. I don't even want to start on Andy, the novel's other psychopath (whom Kendra deserves); suffice it to say that I didn't believe CJ would put up with creepy guy, communicating by leaving notes in the cemetery and dropping everything including her son, when he beckons. McCorkle left me with lots of questions about what happens next.

[Jan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I suspect Jill McCorkle chose the title Life After Life to hint that there can be new life even after one’s family and professional responsibilities have ended, but for me “life after life” described the (too?) many people we meet in this somewhat rambling and uneven novel. After reading 60 pages I needed to return to the beginning to create a who’s who list (shades of Russian novels, but this is hardly Tolstoy). I then discovered I hadn’t forgotten who certain people were, but that a number of them had been mentioned by name only, several times, but not yet identified. Mmmm, interesting device.

Most of the story takes place over a matter of days and is focused on those connected to a senior residence in small-town North Carolina called Pine Haven Estates: several residents and their visitors, one volunteer, and one employee. Some parts also occur a few years prior in New Hampshire.

Each chapter is told from the point of view of or about one character. Sometimes we see the person in action; often the chapters consist of the thoughts and reflections of the character. Some of the chapters are the notebook entries of Joanna, hospice volunteer, who tries to capture the essence of each of the dying persons she sits with. Some are the experiences of individuals just as they pass into another dimension. We meet some of these people only in Joanna’s entries, which adds a tad of confusion as well. (Who’s that? Am I supposed to know him? No, as it turns out.)

Although I think the construction of the novel is quite problematic, the content has its beautiful aspects. Joanna’s notebook entries are especially touching, and we do get to know some of the dynamic and interesting Pine Haven residents through longer chapters: Sadie, Rachel, Stanley, and Toby in particular. We learn not only about their lives, loves, dreams, and disappointments, but also their attitudes about life and death in what is likely to be their final residence. We witness the interactions among the residents: gracious, encouraging, annoying, rude, insulting, and often funny (and in my experience, very real). Because there are multiple viewpoints we are sometimes treated to different sides of the same characters.

But the reader does have to wade through the various confusions to find these gems. Plus there are characters who are decidedly one-dimensional, whose thoughts and actions aren’t pretty. In fact, they are jarring to the narrative and serve no purpose; the actions of two characters in particular are almost unbelievably cruel. And neither of these has more than a very indirect connection to Pine Haven; they just distract from the warm and quirky people we meet there.

“Disappearance” is a theme that runs throughout Life After Life. There is the child magician’s disappearing act, the early disappearance of a dog that hangs over the entire story, the disappearance of former lives and selves, and the great disappearance called death. It’s a little heavy-handed, but it is a theme.

And I think this book will quickly disappear from my memory.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the first 3/4 of this book, and was planning on rating the book with 4 stars. The characters were so well developed and interesting, even the minor characters. I love how she had different points of view from the same event and the death of the characters. Wonderful. Then I read the last 1/4. It was abrupt and seemed like the author did not know how to end the book. After the characters were so well developed, I had trouble seeing certain events occurring. Why would CJ keep tolerating Andy's moves, why would Joanna hide what may be evidence (the note) that CJ did not kill herself? Also, the way Joanna returns the dog will probably just get Sam into trouble and not prevent the mother from finding a way for the dog to disappear again. Why would she not tell Ben what happened to the dog? Why is Joanna interested in Ben? I can understand not having a nice and tidy ending, but this seemed out to sync with the rest of the book.

[Noeleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Pine Haven Estates, a North Carolina retirement home, Jill McCorkle’s novel, Life After Life, introduces us to a wonderful collection of uniquely different characters and through these characters, explores various events in their lives, their thoughts and experiences of life, their life after life and ultimately, their experiences of death.

This is an extremely character driven book. The plot is not important here and takes a necessary second place to the personalities we meet. It is through the characters, their past and present lives, their secrets and their experiences, that the important themes of the book come to life. The book addresses many issues for consideration: how we choose to live our lives; how we choose to accept our circumstances; how, by recognising the mistakes we make that we can change our paths in life with determination, courage, help and guidance; how we can find hope in the most unusual and unexpected places; how we learn to live with the choices we make and how we learn to live with the regrets of the choices that we make; how we perceive the way others view us; how at times, others may actually know us better than we know ourselves; how we can be fooled by others into thinking we know them completely and realise that we really don’t know anybody in the truest sense of the meaning; how it is never too late to make amendments in our lives; how we can perhaps realise too late that the grass is actually greener on our own side of the fence and that the life we think we are looking for is right here under our noses and always was, if only we can recognise it for what it is and appreciate what we truly have. Through all of the above, the themes addressed in the book celebrate life, living and death.

There are many wonderful characters that help us consider, in depth, the themes raised in the novel, the residents of the Pine Haven, volunteers at the facility and the relatives and friends of the residents. The majority of characters are wonderfully normal and wonderfully quirky and provide us with many memorable moments, both extremely sad but also very humorous. Characters such as Sadie, an eight grade teacher for forty years and Stanley Stone, a retired lawyer feigning dementia in order to give his son a life independent of him, were two of my favourites. But it was Toby, who was perhaps my most favourite character, providing many laugh-out-loud moments.

There is no doubt that Jill McCorkle’s writing is first-rate, experienced and mature. There were many times that I had to stop and ponder in order to appreciate the sentiment behind the prose and narrative. This was especially evident in the notes Joanna kept of the many people that she helped in the last moments of their lives. These notes were beautifully written accounts of their lives, even when not all of their lives and experiences were happy ones.

In all honesty, this book started off as a slow burner for me and it wasn’t until approximately half way through that I really started to appreciate the journey of the characters and the themes addressed in the novel. At one stage, I was ready to give up on the book half way through, but I am so very glad that I stuck with it. As McCorkle notes in the book ‘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.’ I guess this quote not only sums up life in general but also captures my overall thoughts of the book itself. It was not until I read the final page that I felt that I truly appreciated the sentiment and messages throughout. While waiting for the big things we most often miss out on the smaller more important aspects of our lives.

I recommend this book to all who enjoy literary fiction or character-focused books. This book is also ideal for Book Clubs. There are so many themes waiting to provide most interesting discussions.

I received a copy of this book from the publishers, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

[Ron Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jill McCorkle has been concentrating on short stories for a long time, and that form leaves a strong imprint on “Life After Life,” her first novel in 17 years. The early chapters read like a collection of stories as they rotate through the lives of people connected to the Pine Haven retirement center. It’s a cheery, one-stop institution that offers independent living with an eye to the undiscovered country: nursing care, hospice and, finally, a graveyard next door. Only later, as these tales accumulate, do we see them coalesce around a tightly connected drama of friendship, betrayal and heartache.

McCorkle grew up in a small North Carolina town and has spent her life tempting us with stereotypes and then exploding them. That practice makes her a particularly engaging guide through the halls of Pine Haven, where few of the residents shuffle along the way we might expect. For those of us hoping to grow old(er), it’s a nice reminder that the twilight years can be just as fraught and surprising as our salad days. If parts of the novel read like a needlepoint sampler, other parts read like needlepoint graffiti.

There’s real suffering here — illness, humiliation, despair unto death — but also a fierce species of joy. “No one,” the narrator notes, “likes to talk about the positive parts of getting older and aging into orphanhood.” But the people of Pine Haven find solace in all kinds of unexpected places as they refuse to go gentle into that good night. “The heart,” one resident observes, “is a tough old organ.”

Although these elderly people live alone in their own rooms, McCorkle focuses on how they interact with each other and the world. Marge Walker, for instance, maintains a “murder and crime scrapbook” and keeps her heart pumping on gossip. Eighty-year-old Rachel Silverman checked herself in after burying her dull husband up in Massachusetts. She chose Pine Haven to live near the site of an affair that once gave her life meaning, but now she can’t quite believe that she’s stuck among all these yahoos in the “home of lard, Jesus, sugared-up tea.” Meanwhile, Toby Tyler lives in a fit of good cheer, not quite in or out of the closet.

The day of reckoning may be near, but all of these characters are still flirting with illusions, a theme McCorkle mines for both comedy and tragedy. Stanley Stone pretends to be suffering from dementia so that his dutiful son will finally give up on him and go live his own life. The cost of that ridiculous plan far outweighs its benefits, but Stanley finds there’s something freeing about being released from the constraints of proper behavior. And Sadie Randolph, 85, a retired third-grade teacher, maintains a steady business by creating “new memories” for her fellow residents at Pine Haven. Using her Polaroid camera and scissors, she places people where they wish they’d been: “She put the woman who got all her hair cut off (before it all got cut off) out on the grandstrand on a beautiful sunny day pictured in Southern Living. She used her Sharpies to turn the wheelchair into a beautiful red beach chair and then added a little yellow sand pail as if the woman might get up and go hunt for shells any minute.”

That sweet quirkiness could grow as cloying as the lemon-scented air of the Community Room, but for a while, McCorkle adds enough pathos to keep these moments fresh. She also escapes the claustrophobic setting by drawing us out into the lives of people who pass through Pine Haven as friends, volunteers and employees.

Unfortunately, though, some of these characters are designed to dispense Wisdom and Inspirational Truths in doses that would be more effective if more attenuated. In college, the woman I eventually married warned me that not all our deep revelations should be shared, and I couldn’t help thinking that each time I read a line like, “The longest and most expensive journey you will ever make is the one to yourself.” Hurry, Grim Reaper.

Other characters muddy the novel’s early magic with histrionics. Abby, the 12-year-old girl who lives next to the retirement home, enjoys some tender interactions with the elderly residents, but soon she’s covered with cobwebs of sentimentality. An overwrought plot involving her beloved dog with the cringe-inducing name Dollbaby paws through the whole novel. And worse — much worse — Abby’s mother is a cartoon villain of monstrous envy and bitterness, a character who seems to have no other purpose than to make us feel morally superior. She announces her every wicked thought and deed with an ear-splitting bugle call. The lack of subtlety here, the complete absence of psychological depth, is inexplicable from a writer of McCorkle’s skill and generosity. And when the final pages suddenly collapse in an avalanche of melodrama, it’s hard not to conclude that the novel simply got away from her.

Far better are the brief excerpts from the journal of one of the volunteers at Pine Haven who comforts the dying. In these pages, some just a paragraph long, we see the final moments of various residents: what they looked like, who was with them and what they said when “the King be witnessed in the Room.” These passages are unabashedly sweet, but pure and lovely, sometimes achingly intimate. And each of them is followed by an even more concentrated passage that’s slightly magical: just a snippet or sensory impression from the dearly departed’s life that conveys some essential insight.

But overall, what a messy quilt this novel is, with its awkwardly stitched patches of profundity and comedy, bathos and melodrama. There’s just enough here to recommend it, but don’t feel guilty if you drift away about halfway through. As the residents of Pine Haven know, life is short, and there are lots of good books out there.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my constant worries as a reader is that a beloved author will disappoint. It is especially true when the beloved author hasn’t published anything in a long, long time. Jill McCorkle is one such author for me and I must say that I was very, very worried that her new book, Life After Life, would be a disappointment. Happily, I will tell you that this did not happen.

Life After Life takes place in a nursing home. All the characters live in the nursing home or work in the nursing home or have family or friends in the nursing home. Death is a silent character in every story in this book. You can see Death, waiting down the hall, sitting on the bed, at times hovering over and carrying our characters away, and that gives the stories resonance. Unlike other books with younger characters, the characters in Life After Life often greet Death, welcome Death, like a beloved friend; Death in these stories is no longer the enemy.

I liked this book a lot, but you should know that I’m at a place in my life where Death is visiting more and more of my family and friends. I’m not sure the stories would have the same impact for those of you who are not well acquainted with him.

[Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a big disappointment for me. It was not at all what I expected. Based on the summary, I thought the story would revolve around the life stories, lessons learned and wisdom of the residents of a home for the elderly as told to two younger women - a hospice volunteer and a hairdresser/manicurist who work there. That is not what the book delivered. The stories were disjointed, it was difficult to keep the characters straight and there were no life lessons or wisdom anywhere to be found. Most of the characters were unlikable and there was no resolution to any of the subplots. I listened to an audio version of this book, so that may have contributed to the confusion of keeping the characters straight. However, the narrator was terrible. Except for when there was dialogue (which was seldom), she droned on in a boring monotone with no effort to distinguish one narrator/character from another. I can not recommend this book. 1.5 stars - somewhere between I didn't like it and it was OK. The extra .5 stars is given because there was one character Abby, a thirteen year old with a difficult home situation, that I felt for and fell in love with. Too bad I have no sense of how her story unfolds, due to the lack of resolution of any of the story lines.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

After listening to Jill McCorkle's talk at a Booktopia Petosky, MI I had to move Life after Life up on my list. Hearing McCorkle speak about her intentions gave me a better understanding of where she was coming from. Forgive me if these are not quite what she said - It ain't over til it's over, that drama and humor tread a thin line, and that there can be a celebration of life even with the bleakest of topics - piqued my interest and got me reading.

I have mentioned before that as I get older and loved ones depart I am more interested in end of life issues. This hit home with McCorkle too as she visited her father who was dying of lung cancer. Even as she grieved she became enthralled by the process of dying and how our bodies shut down, going from life to what comes next. She likens this bodily shutdown to"going through your house and turning out the lights". As she watched her father prepare for his death she couldn't help wondering what he was thinking. She also noted while living this grieving, the mundane chores of life still must go on. Experiencing his death and later her aging mother's slip into Alzheimer's with need for a nursing home bredLife after Life. This blending of life stories of a group of residents in Pine Haven Estates, NC are not only the summation of who they are but also the end of life memories as they draw their last breaths.

In reading the reviews of Life after Life some had trouble with the varying story lines and many characters, others found the transition from past to present confusing. For some the humor seemed out of place and others found aspects that didn't ring true. Though I did wonder why McCorkle included some characters and questioned what they did, my overall goals for reading this were met. I chucked what I didn't like and basked in what I loved.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readers looking for unforgettable characters and thought provoking issues need look no further than Jill McCorkle’s latest novel Life After Life. Meet the residents, staff, and neighbors of the Pine Haven retirement center in Fulton, North Carolina, and prepare to have your life changed by them. From the youngest visitor, twelve year old Abby, to eighty-five year old resident Sadie, there is a lot about life to be learned. Other residents include Stanley Stone, a once prominent lawyer now feigning dementia to avid this relationship with his troubled son, and Rachel Silverman, who is not from the area, has no family in the area, but feels the unmistakable need to live out her final days in Fulton. The novel centers around Joanna, a middle aged hospice volunteer that has discovered her path in life is to help other achieve a good death, and to remember them and their lives. As these characters interact with one another their mysteries and the consequences of their lives are revealed, and they and the reader begin to see the magical possibilities that life can bring at any age. At times laugh out loud funny, at others heartbreakingly realistic Life After Life is a testament to life, and death, and especially the ways others touch our lives and live on in our hearts and memories long after they have passed on. Life After Life is an unforgettable, mysterious and magical novel; don’t miss it!

[Melissa Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

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. 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.)

[Elizabeth☮ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in a retirement home, this book interweaves the lives of the residents and those that care for them. It is told in alternating narratives, which, initially took me a while to get used to. Not because the writing is unclear, but because I had to get the characters straight in my head.

This is a book about small moments that change the course of a life. Small moments that carry weight and importance, but it's also knowing when to let go of such moments.

I felt such a warm feeling in my heart reading this book. The characters are so genuine and lovable. I am so glad I finally got around to reading it.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had Jill McCorkle kept with what I suspect was her original intention – to shine a spotlight on that creaky bridge between two places, the past and the present, the before and the after– this would have been a brilliant book.

But instead, she tries to mine her material to uncover human eccentricity and comedy and the result is a book that must settle on being entertaining.

With a nod toward Edgar Lee Masters and the Spoon River Anthology, Jill McCorkle focuses on the people of Pine Haven Retirement Home: gentle and wise third-grade teacher Sadie Randolph who believes that every one of us is really only eight years old in our hearts…Stanley Stone, an irascible ex-workaholic lawyer who is now pretending to be demented to give his adult son the gift of an independent life… Rachel Silverman, aka The Shark, who chases down the memories of an old and buried love affair…and more.

Add to this mix the multi-married Joanna, the hospice volunteer who records the last words and memories of the dying (“Keep us close. Keep us alive. Don’t ever let us disappear.”), the tattooed and pierced C.J. who “claims to have lots of secrets, lots of ghosts”, and little Abby, the child of a troubled marriage who finds solstice at Pine Haven, and you have the makings of a character-focused book.

There’s a lot of poignancy and quirkiness within these pages, instantly recognizable to adult children who have watched their parents implode into eternity. Jill McCorkle paints many of her characters with fine strokes, detailing the uniqueness of the lives…and the deaths. As these individuals hold onto vestiges of their lives and their hard-won illusions, they become almost heroic in their dignity.

Where Jill McCorkle stumbles is when she robs some of her characters of their individual humanity. A pretentious, rank-striving wife…a bigoted older woman who spews her venom…a self-involved man who has a late-life epiphany and now tries to be unselfish for his son’s sake…all of these start to become caricatures. The message the author imparts is cheapened by new-age lines like, “The longest and most expensive journey you will ever make is the one to yourself.”

At times, Life After Life will have the reader examining his/her own life and need for connection. At other times, this loftier goal is sacrificed for pure entertainment. If you think of Spoon River Anthology combined with The Golden Girls, you get the picture.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some really lovely stuff going in Jill McCorkle's Life After Life, basically a collection of character studies that coalesce with each other and across time, from the past to present. Set in a retirement community (tho sort of combo'd with assisted living and nursing home), there is some wonderful meditations on the meaning of life and death. While many of the characters that populate this novel are elderly members of this community, central figures also include a hospice worker, a pierced and tattooed beautician, family members, and a young girl who lives near the facility and has a developed a special kinship with the residents (and a few more too!).

Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the characters. Over time, connections (aha! moments) are made and a readers get the bigger picture and different versions of the truth, sometimes the character telling their own story, other times by someone else who is part of their life.

It was an interesting way to tell/grow a story, but I just never felt that I was fully into it. Particularly in the beginning, it was difficult to remember who was who and it would take a good step or two (or three) in a chapter to figure out what was what. If McCorkle was doing this purposely to make the reader relate to the characters via memory issues and/or dementia, well good for her - but my hunch is that it was not intentional.

Other issues? I had a credibility problem with one of the characters, a mother who was so inexplicably cruel to her child and just plain miserable period. I do not have a problem with evil or unlikable characters, or even "bad mothers" for that matter, but I just never got a sense of why this person was the way they were. The strength of this book was McCorkle's very well-developed, three-dimensional characters and this one stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Also, the end seemed a bit rushed/"time to wrap this up" in nature. It all seemed a bit uncharacteristic (there we go again with characters!) given the with the rest of the novel -- more plot/twist driven, than leisurely and meandering reflections on lives lived and lost.

I vacillated between 3 and 4 stars throughout the book, so an unofficial 3.5 stars but with a not too toss-and-turn Goodreads round-down to 3 stars.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a nurse who has worked in an assisted living facility in the past, I really wanted to love this book, and the description made it sound great, as did all of the great reviews. I, however, was immensely disappointed. Each "chapter" is about a different character--in his or her perspective but told from a (usually) third-person point-of-view. I was over half-way through the book before I could piece together all the characters and their connections and relationships, as some are mentioned only once or twice in the entire novel (and often in a vague reference). I often felt as if the book was actually fifteen different novels that had been ripped apart then haphazardly pieced back together, with numerous pages missing altogether! And I hate to say it, but I hated the author's style of writing. She attempts to write each chapter from that character's perspective, but frequently wavers between first and third person narrative--sometimes in the same paragraph! The sentences are also either fragments that are not sentences at all (but written as if they are--a huge pet peeve of mine!)--or crazy-long rambling narratives that go on and on and on and on. Many times a sentence will encompass an entire paragraph (with said paragraph being a half page long!)!! I was not at all fond of the ending--yet another let's-leave-the-reader-hanging-and-wondering-what-happens-ending...sigh. I did enjoy the relationships that develop between some characters, and most of the characters were believable, which made the novel tolerable to me.

[Kelly Hager · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a complete surprise. I hadn't read any of Jill McCorkle's books before, although I had always heard good things.

All I knew going into this book was the fact that there were two books called Life After Life coming out almost on the same day, and that this one is likely to be overshadowed by the Kate Atkinson version. (The plots are completely different.)

This book focuses on the lives of people connected to an assisted living home, and it is absolutely beautiful. (And that's one of the things that Jill McCorkle seems to be known for, absolutely beautiful prose.)

There are two things that struck me the most. The first is the fact that the residents mostly seem to be forgotten. Even the volunteers who come (typically students) are obviously there more to get school credit for volunteering and they don't care at all about the residents.

And the second is the fact that loss is so much a part of life. This is something that I'm being confronted with over and over this year, and one of the characters even says that the price of loving people is knowing that you're going to lose them. It's true and it's better than the alternative (living in such a way that you never love anyone, ever) but it's such a hard, horrible truth.

Highly recommended.

[Heather Fineisen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay so I wrote this brilliant review filled with witticisms and profound observations and for some reason it didn't save. That said, Jill McCorkle has apparently been a well known, although not by me, southern writer who hasn't published a book in many years. I consider this an early holiday gift, as I have the joy of experiencing her other books. Life after Life is about a retirement community in North Carolina and the characters, and I do mean characters, who live and work there. Joanna, a hospice volunteer, records their stories after their deaths. This could be contrived in some hands, but not McCorkle's. She captures the youth and age in each character. And you will recognize someone here at Pine Haven Estates. Tell them I said Hi!

Life after Life was provided by the publisher at NetGalley and will be published in March 2013. Add this to your to read list.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Awesome characters, good writing, interesting read but the ending took this from a 3/4 star book to a 2. The ending was so out of the blue that it seemed to come from a completely different book and made me really dislike the book. Barring the last chapter, totally worth reading.

[Elaine Drennon]

I fell in love with Jill McCorkle when I read The Cheerleader in 1984 and have owned every book since. While her short story collections are my favorites of their genre, I always believed I could never love another novel as much as Tending to Virginia, which I swore she'd stolen from characters in my immediate family and from feelings I'd harbored that I'd never divulged to a soul. But it's 5 a.m. and I just finished Life After Life, and this is surely my "new" favorite novel of all time.

Worried that I might be entering a quaint-but-poignant tear-jerker, I was indeed misty-eyed a few times but laughed out loud even more. Though the majority of the story takes place in a small-town southern retirement home, these characters are a wonderful menagerie of voices unlike any I've met. Sadie is an eighty-something, wheel chair-bound retired educator who taught third grade in the same school for nearly fifty years. Her husband in the adjoining cemetery, her children and grandchildren grown and gone, Sadie has created a "glue and scissors" photo/card business that has geriatric dreamers lined at her door each day. Her best friend Toby, another retired teacher, lives in the assisted living wing and is always ready to challenge the more conservative seniors with her liberal ideas, beliefs, and language. Stanley Stone, once the town's most esteemed attorney, now resides there, too-- appearing to be only interested in wrestling magazines and frightening the ladies with bigoted, and sometimes vulgar comments---but Rachel Silverman, a late 60's Massachusetts attorney, ousts Stanley's secret while admitting her own. Twelve-year-old Abby has known Sadie all her life: her dad's favorite teacher, they visited her long before she moved to the facility next door, but Abby's lonely existence makes her a welcome regular there (though she tells her social climbing mother she's visiting "friends" her age.) Add a tattooed, fortune-telling manicurist, a few local losers, drunks, cavorters, a would-be magician and the town's most married divorce, and Fulton, North Carolina has something for everyone.

While chapters are written through multiple narrators, between every few chapters is a short "dying journal" chronicling the last days of a particular senior. A personal project created by Joanna Lamb, Hospice worker, who began this under the guidance of her third husband before his own death. After each journal entry and from the deceased's perspective is a quick flash of what each of them first see and hear on "the other side." Neither of these added documents are required to make the story complete, yet they add another element and flavor to an already complex tale of life's journey.

As a retired music teacher, I've seen many insides of facilities like Pine Valley. The residents were happy to see students come and perform for them, yet I was always uncomfortable to the point of counting the minutes. To witness their happiness in simple pleasures in an interior that tried to be a home but never was made me sad to enter and even sadder to leave. The characters in Life After Life spoke to me in a way that diminished the lump in my throat; no, it doesn't make growing old suddenly a happy place, but I can at least swallow.

Last Sunday's Atlanta Journal/Constitution announced the April 2nd release of another Life After Life novel, this one by Kate Atkinson. The reviews look promising; I'm sure it's a good book, but the title and the timing make me sad. McCorkle's Life After Life is an unusual story that I will recommend often for pleasurable reading and for an inspirational look at a place we're all going, like it or not. It is also a beautiful novel of the human capacity for self-discovery. In McCorkle's tale, the character Joanna explains:

"The longest and most expensive journey you will ever take is the one to yourself. Some people never purchase a ticket. Some only get halfway. Some stand like Moses glimpsing the Promised Land. For some, that's about as good as getting there."

McCorkle's first novel in seventeen years, I SO wish this beautiful journey could be bound in a title all it's own...

[Dougald Blue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This amazing book is a literary gem. It is centered on a nursing home in a small town near the North Carolina coast (sounds like Southport to me) and weaves together the lives of a disparate group of folks, young and old. It might sound dreary. It is anything but. It points to the resilience and creativity in all of us through all of life no matter how hard things can get for us. It is a selection in St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church’s summer reading program. Here is my comment on the book’s effect on me as Life After LifeI read it:

I finished Life After Life a week ago and have since been allowing its grace to process through my mind. First impressions of books as profound as this one are rarely what I carry forward in life, and I knew that would be the case with this one too. Finally, early one morning, I had one of those fist-pumping “Yesssss!” moments you see sports fans do these days. This is what I got:

Something like an “infographic” formed in my mind. In lieu of a Dramatis Personae at the beginning – something one of my friends said she had wished for along the way – at about the halfway point my map began to form. I “saw” all the people in parallel columns. But the neat thing was that lines among them all began to form too, some straight and bold, others dotted or dashed.

My infographic stuck with me and forced my own conclusion, rather than some spoon-fed Cliff’s Notes thing. And that made all the difference in finding myself in Life After Life. I felt myself amidst all the flawed, battered, lonely people acting out their loneliness. But then, were they? Not really. The connections – the lines broken or bold – trumped all in the end both here and hereafter – a great and encouraging testament to the resilience, resourcefulness and value in all of our lives.

… And, as I suspected it would, the literary device of Dollbaby was genius. Abby’s faith runs like a gentle gold chain though the stories. Despite all the fragility, Dollbaby seemed somehow to pull all the lines in my infographic together.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My earliest idea for this novel came twenty years ago when I sat with my dad as he was dying. The idea was completely abstract, and I didn’t even begin to know how to pursue it. But I knew that I was interested in capturing and highlighting that moment when a person leaves. One minute you are in the room with someone who has a life filled with detailed history and memories, and in the next minute, the person is gone, and those details and memories (those that have been told to someone) are all that remain. For me, it was a life-changing experience."

This is a story about mostly old people in a retirement home and a few of the people who came to visit them including a little girl who lived next-door.

My dad died June 11, 2016 at the age of 95. He lived for the last five years of his life in an assisted living facility. I lived several states away and came to visit with him regularly. I slept in a fold out couch in his room and ate meals with him in the dining room with all of the people he lived with. Often when I arrive to see him I would notice someone missing from the dining room and he would tell me they had died. I talked with him regularly on the telephone between visits and he never mentioned the deaths. I wanted to read this book because of him.

I wrote the following paragraph about a month before dad died. This book it's kind of like that paragraph in that it is a foreshadowing of a time we all face.

It is Sunday, May 8, 2016. Dad just phoned me from St Anne's Mead at 11:30 AM. He would normally be in church at this time of day but today he went to church in the chapel at St Anne's Mead. He is not getting around so much since his fall a week ago on Sunday. He is very much feeling that he is at a significant change point in his life. He called me this morning to say that he had the title of a book that may not get written by him. The title is "Turn the Page." I told him that it might be like the self-portrait that his family is hoping he will do in art class.

[Gloria ~ mzglorybe · Rating 1 out of 5]

The accolades from reviewers prompted me to expect much more. After completing about half of the novel I realized that the "masterpiece" promised by the editor on the back cover was not going to happen. I was expecting a luminosity of prose, something worthy of the term "masterpiece." I really can't imagine a novel being referred to as a "masterpiece" when on page 14, very early on, we are introduced to "C.J." whose opening line is "Speaking of things never to tell your kids: How about where you were f****** at the time of conception? How about that?" and "Yeah, whatever. F*** your brains out!"

These first 100 or so pages jump around in vignettes of several people who either are residing or working at Pine Haven Retirement Facility, with chapters voicing each of their personalities, opinions and stages of their lives.

If you are looking for uplifting reading about the elderly, or something inspiring, or if you are dealing with facing death in the near future, perhaps caring for someone who is (as I am) this is not it. I rarely give up on a novel, but in this case I did not care enough about any of the characters to continue. Too many books, too little time, as they say.

I was awarded an advanced readers copy, for my review. Sorry I couldn't give it any positives. I was disappointed. Perhaps the finished/published copy has delivered more of what was promised by the editor. Let's hope so.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been years - maybe even decades - since I read Jill McCorkle, and I was attracted to this book about the intersection of elderly retirement-home folks with others in a small community as my mother now lives in one of these facilities and I had hoped to get some insight into life there. The characters are enjoyable (well, most of them - not Kendra or the heart surgeon), and McCorkle does a nice job of giving the elderly folks full, well-rounded lives and characters and of mostly avoiding stereotypes. The narrative structure was interesting as well with chapters allocated to perspectives of individual characters interspersed with short obituary-like bits and short, lyrical 1-2 pagers capturing the last internal moments of the dying. I liked these last ones the best - more poetic, more stream-of-consciousness, often poignant. However, the murder of one character towards the end of the book seemed to come out of nowhere and to be entirely gratuitous - I could not fathom what the purpose was. Then the book just peters out, with several plot strands left dangling. Still, for the freshness of a book focused largely on folks over 80, this book is worth a read.

[Kara Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. This was definitely a different story, and I really struggled with it at first. Life after Life focuses mainly on the residents of Pine Haven Retirement and Assisted Living Home. As we meet the various residents and start hearing their story~ what their life was like in their younger years, and what their life is like now as they are aging and struggling with various health and life issues. I enjoyed these folks, especially Stanley. However, the author does not give the same balance to each character. There is also a side storyline, and while it does involve ( somewhat) the Pine Haven setting, it ended up being convoluted and I felt unnecessary.
Have not read anything else by this author, but would give her another try.

[Donna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think the problem I had with this book was way it was written. It goes back & forth among several characters point of views. However, it is always written in third person and is mostly that person's thoughts. It just doesn't work. There are some conversations in the book but not a whole lot. There are also entries from Joanna's notebook. There are moments when I thought "ok, that was interesting. Maybe the book will pick up." It never did. I found this style of book to be long winded and ultimately leads nowhere. It was like pieces of several stories and the only connection between the stories was that the people all ended up at this senior living facility (or lived nearby). What was the point? I honestly wouldn't have finished it if I hadn't been reading it for the book club at my local library.

[Chance Lee · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a disappointing book, one with more than a few very nice passages that add up to nothing, like a dance troupe full of brilliant dancers but an incompetent choreographer renders them clumsy oafs.

Most of the characters (and there are way too many of them), are well-rounded and interesting. We have a hospice worker, many residents of a nursing home, a twelve-year-old girl, her awful mother, and a cosmetician who works at the nursing home. The nursing home residents are the most interesting, like Toby, a retired schoolteacher with a sense of humor and positivity; or Sadie, another retired school teacher who cobbles together pictures of people in famous locations as if they'd been there, a nursing-home version of PhotoShop; and Marge, a crotchety old bat everyone hates. There's also Rachel, who had an affair while married and wants to learn more about her illicit lover, who died recently, and Stanley, the most ridiculous character who is faking dementia because he thinks it will help his son. Huh?

Stanley is an example of an unforgivable fiction problem: someone pulling an elaborate stunt when just talking to the person would be a lot easier and more realistic. McCorkle has Stanley act like an asshole all the time, but we're supposed to like him because he has a good heart! That's what we're told anyway, when being shown exactly the opposite. If this were a different novel, and McCorkle took it to absurd heights -- instead of reading wrestling magazines, Stanley himself wore spandex and vaulted off the backs of couches, for example -- it may have worked. Here, it doesn't.

We're told a lot of things in Life After Life. The first 200 pages is almost entirely exposition and background information. We meet character after character (a more appropriate title), and we're told their entire life history... and for what? Sprinkle between this is an assortment of journal entries by Joanna, who keeps this journal for no real reason, and writes about the deaths of characters we never meet and many who have absolutely no bearing on what little plot there is. What we're left with reads like an outline for a novel, an assortment of character sheets, building blocks without a plan for a final building.

Despite years and years of exposition and backstory, I think the entire book literally takes place over the course of one day. Rachel wants to visit her lover's childhood home. That never happens. Kendra plans on throwing a birthday party for Abbie, who doesn't even want a part. That never happens. Stanley is faking dementia so his son will stop being an asshole. No surprise, but that doesn't happen either.

McCorkle has a "powerful gift for dialogue," according to the Boston Globe. That, I agree with. The most entertaining parts of the book are when the characters get into spirited conversations. However, lazy pop culture references -- references to Lost and Oprah's talk show, two programs that ended three YEARS before the book's publication -- date the book unnecessarily. Also, the dialogue only seems to work well for old white women. It works very well for the old white women, but the brown-skinned tattooed cosmetologist is a complete mess. McCorkle tries to make her sound "hard" in a way that no one actually talks. She also greatly oversimplifies this complex character, reducing her hair color choice and tattoos to "she's so depressed she has to write on herself!" Also this sole minority character in the whole book dies in the end. That ending is abrupt and pointless, and makes it all the more apparent that this book has no structure or point other than a writerly exercise.

There is a nice recurring theme of feminism, albeit a reductive one, that runs throughout, and a few funny observations, like how people down South call Massachusetts, Massatwosetts. But this rambling stream-of-consciousness novel overstays its welcome. Like this kind of place in the South itself, it's a nice place to visit oh-so-briefly, but you do not want to stay there for an extended period of time.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd read some of the mixed reviews this book received before I started it and still it sounded like a book I would enjoy. I like novels that are character driven, I like stories that start slowly. I liked reading about the dozen or so characters whose lives are connected through the Pine Haven retirement home, along with a variety of funny anecdotal stories that punctuate their memories, some made me laugh out loud.

I liked the characters McCorkle created and the way she revealed them to us, some sane, some crazy or seemingly so, some anxious and annoying, some thoughtful and kind. We learn their secrets, the regret they feel about mistakes they've made along the way, as well as accomplishments they're proud of. McCorkle created realistic characters with what felt like authentic lives, including the myriad of memories about their loved ones who died before them. They realize Pine Haven is where they will live out the remainder of their lives.

The younger characters in the novel offer the forward momentum for the story. Thirteen year old Abby is frustrated with her parents and their constant fighting, her dog has run away from home and she's put posters up all over town offering a reward for her return. Abby's best friend is Sadie, who lives at Pine Haven. Joanna grew up here in Fulton, North Carolina and returned to be with her father when he was dying. She volunteers at the nursing home and helps the residents and their families when it's their time to die. She's been married a few times, and her childhood sweetheart lives right next door to Pine Haven. He used to make her disappear when they were magicians in high school. Carolina Jessamine, CJ for short, is a bit rough around the edges, her combat boots and Goth looks might repel some but the tattoos don't show in long sleeves and men always see her beauty.

I was flipping the pages, enjoying these characters, thinking what a nice book this was (what a solid four star book this was). It was reminding me a little bit of 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' by Rachel Joyce, which I read recently and really enjoyed and also of 'A Bed by the Window' by M. Scott Peck, which I read over twenty years ago and don't remember a lot of the details beyond it being set in a nursing home. So, as I said I was reading along enjoying this book wondering what was going to happen with one particular thread of the story and really only hoping for that single issue to resolve itself when *B*A*M* McCorkle threw a curveball ending and in my honest opinion ruined her lovely little book.

I want to know what Jill McCorkle was thinking!? Why did she do it? Where was her editor? How can readers who gave this book four and five stars get past the ending? I just finished the book last night and I'm still more than a little annoyed by the ending. That was not the ending this book is supposed to have. Honestly the ending ruined this book for me. I would have been happier had I read all but the last 10 pages and then dropped it in the lake or lost it somewhere never to read the ending.

So, to sum it up, this was a book I really liked, until the ending (in case you missed that sentiment). I would recommend you borrow it from the library, read up to page 328 and then return it and forget that you didn't read the ending!

Thank you to the Amazon Vine Program and Algonquin Books for the uncorrected proof offered in exchange for an honest review.

[Chaitra · Rating 3 out of 5]

No. Just no. This is a mellow, slow burning character study, whose ending has no business being in it. The setting of the old age home, the little chapters of the main actors of this story whose prime has already passed, it's all very beautifully written.

It was truly wonderful, dense more than slow, with characters the reader is compelled to care about. Gutsy Rachel Silverman with the memories of a past affair, Sadie the graceful and kind third grade teacher, Abby the little kid from next door whose own family is breaking up, Stanley Stone acting demented so his younger son can have a life and Joanna piecing together her life working for the dying - all written with respect.

And then there was the ending. What was the point? It is sensational, only there to provoke, but without a resolution it's more an unnecessary distraction that makes the book look like a cheap thriller that it's not. There was already an ending suitable for the pace and the quality of this book (Sadie's death, which was lost in the middle of C.J's nonsense).

A disappointing finish to an otherwise excellent book, and it leaves enough of a bad taste for me to rate it lower than I would have. 3 stars.

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley for review.

[JanB · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a hospice volunteer, and with elderly parents in assisted living situations, I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed.

Each chapter is told from a different character's POV and more than a few are rambling and confusing stream of consciousness writing. I was expecting a story that, according to the book description, "celebrates the blessings and wisdom of later life and infuses this remarkable novel with hope and laughter". Instead this book and the lives of many of the characters left me feeling icky. I would have been better off not knowing what most of them were thinking and doing. The ending was odd and seemed to come out of nowhere.

However, I did enjoy Joanna's journal entries on her experiences as a hospice volunteer, and I loved Sadie, the 85 yr old retired teacher. There were some nuggets of wisdom but there just wasn't enough to push this book into the 'good" category.

One final observation: I'm no prude and vulgarity sometimes fits the story line but too many times in this book it felt gratuitous.

[Mimi Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished reading this book while staying in my Dad's retirement community for a week. While I don't recommend that environment as it all feels "too real", I had often thought there should be a way to collect all the stories represented in communities like Dad's. These. Residents all come from somewhere else and no one really gets to know one another's storiesl. I thought McCorkle did a great job of expressing that and of creating very memorable characters.

I didn't feel some of the plot twists felt plausible and, I felt she rushed to end, almost as if she had a deadline to meet and just had to stop. I had worked to know her characters and, while I don't need books where things end well, I do need the ending to have a sense of conclusion for those characters' sake...okay, for mine! Life After Life lacked that for me.

McCorkle does do a great job of creating characters and writing dialog. The book is with the read for that alone.