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Book Summary and Reviews of Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

Olga Dies Dreaming

A Novel

by Xochitl Gonzalez

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2022, 384 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots - all in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are boldfaced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's power brokers.

Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1 percent but she can't seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.

Olga and Prieto's mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.

Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife, and the very notion of the American dream―all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. Olga and Prieto are highly-motivated, career-focused people who are invested in their communities. In what ways do the divergent trajectories of the two siblings reflect their different relationship to their hometown of Brooklyn? To the values of the society around them?
  2. Family is an essential thread in this story and we see this through different lenses whether it's Olga cunningly providing napkins for Mabel's wedding or whether it's Prieto rooting Olga on from the sidelines. Which of these moments resonated with you and how you show up for those in your own family? Why?
  3. Mateo enters Olga's life and unapologetically discloses his own backstory. How does their romantic relationship change and influence some of the ...
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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Warmhearted but tough-minded story of a sister and brother grappling with identity, family, and life goals in gentrifying Brooklyn...Atmospheric, intelligent, and well informed: an impressive debut." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Gonzalez's edifying debut follows a successful Puerto Rican Brooklynite with family baggage that increasingly disrupts her life...The expository dialogue often feels stilted, but the characters' yearning to see the island thrive adds passion and complexity. Gonzalez elevates this family drama with a great deal of insight on the characters' diaspora and politics." - Publishers Weekly

"A wonderful and thought-provoking story." - BookRiot

"The extraordinary accomplishment of Olga Dies Dreaming is in how a familiar-enough tale—a woman seeking love, happiness, and fulfillment in the big city—slowly reveals itself to be something else altogether. It's a book about a New York that isn't always celebrated, the one that belongs to immigrant communities; about money, class, and political power; about one vividly-imagined family and the very idea of the American Dream." - Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

"In this sparkling debut, Gonzalez digs deep into the damaged heart of a family, ably dissecting the knottiness of conditional love, identity, loyalty, secrets and the very definition of home. That she manages to cover so much ground with wisdom, tenderness and abundant humor makes this book a complete joy, and I will think about its richly drawn, deeply human characters for a very long time." - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest and Good Company

"Olga Dies Dreaming is the story of an imperfect family shattered by secrets, grief, and abandonment, and of people who rise up, refusing to be broken. Smart, witty, and driven, Gonzalez's Olga hustles, stumbles, falls, and eventually finds her way. An unflinching examination of capitalism, corruption, gentrification, colonialism, and their effects on marginalized people, Olga Dies Dreaming is a poignant, scalding debut." - Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls

This information about Olga Dies Dreaming was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Cathryn Conroy

A Big, Weird Novel! A Remarkable and Powerful Book That Is Also a Really Good Read
This is a remarkable and powerful story that is also a really good read, but the best description of all comes straight from author Xochitl Gonzalez: It's a big, weird novel.

It is a novel about a lot of things: Puerto Rican politics, political corruption, the close-knit diaspora of Puerto Rican communities in New York City, and a bit of Puerto Rican history. But more than all that, this is a very human novel—a story about breaking free from social restraints and family expectations and fully realizing your dreams…of becoming who you were meant to be.

This is the story of Olga Acevedo and her brother Prieto Acevedo. It's the summer of 2017, and the two are part of a large and loving Puerto Rican family in Brooklyn. Still, their lives are grounded in a deep and abiding heartache. They were abandoned by their mother, Blanca, when Olga was 12 and Prieto was 15 when she left the country to follow a fringe figure to fight as a revolutionary for an independent Puerto Rico, while their father left them for drugs, becoming a heroin addict who eventually died of AIDS.

Ivy League graduate Olga, now 41, is the wildly successful owner of an upscale wedding planning business, while Prieto, who is recently divorced with a young daughter he adores, is the U.S. congressman for their Brooklyn district. Olga may plan gorgeous weddings for New York's upper crust, but she has no love life of her own beyond meaningless sex with a series of men she never allows to get emotionally close. And Prieto may be a political wunderkind, but he is being blackmailed as he harbors a personal secret that he is terrified could erupt in a devastating, personal scandal at any time.

Just as Olga meets a wonderful and loving man named Matteo who may change her life in ways she never imagined, Prieto is so consumed with his own secrets that he shuts out those who love him most, especially Olga. It is Matteo who forces Olga to examine all the secrets and lies that have consumed her family's past and present. But Olga and Prieto can no longer hide in the emotional armor they have erected around themselves because Blanca comes roaring back in their lives days after Puerto Rico is consumed by Hurricane Maria in September 2017. What their mother asks of each of them after all these years of separation is astonishing in an eye-popping horrifying way, and their reaction to her is equally astonishing in an eye-popping gratifying way. (Oh, this is good!) That said, the ending is a bit unsettling…and maybe a portent of things to come.

I so enjoy reading books about cultures that are not my own because I learn so much. And because this is a novel with a compelling story and vivid characters, I seemingly became part of that culture while I was immersed in the pages of the book. That is the magic of reading. It allows us to embrace an empathy and understanding we wouldn't otherwise have.

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Author Information

Xochitl Gonzalez Author Biography

Xochitl Gonzalez received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and the recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship for Fiction. Olga Dies Dreaming is her debut novel. Prior to writing, Xochitl wore many hats, including entrepreneur, wedding planner, fundraiser and tarot card reader. She is a proud alumna of the New York City Public School system and holds a B.A. in Art History and Visual Art from Brown University. She lives in her hometown of Brooklyn with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.

Link to Xochitl Gonzalez's Website

Name Pronunciation
Xochitl Gonzalez: first name is pronounced so-cheel

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