Life After Life
Author: Jill McCorkle
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book (Algonquin)
Publication Date: March 26, 2013
ISBN-10: 1565122550
ISBN-13: 978-1565122550
Book Description:
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 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.
Idgie Says:
A book chock full of characters. Each chapter is a different one, though of course there are repeating ones. It starts with Joanna, who works at the retirement home and begins to keep a journal while there. Various chapters are journal entries after someone has died, describing them and what Joanne knew about their lives. So I would describe this book as being filled with little vignettes of lives - some sad, some happy, how they ended up in the a retirement home, others that make you think, "what if it was me?"
I would call this an emotional book that might make you ponder your current life a bit more and where it might be heading in the future.