Xochitl GonzalezRezensionen

I love the arc of this story, how things develop and alter the perspectives of the characters - refreshing and solid. Unique basis for a story. I appreciate the cultural insights of Puerto Rican life, and want to know more.

On a macro level, this is a novel about political unrest and revolution and race and oppression. On a micro level, Olga Dies Dreaming is novel about secrets, appearances, protection, loyalty, but, mostly, it’s about love. The love for family and culture and place. And the love between two semi-orphaned siblings who struggle to overcome a deep-seated need for a mother’s love and acceptance. Through their journey to overcome the absence of a mother’s love, Olga and Prieto deal with the individual compromises they make in pursuit of filling the hole left by their mother: Olga still trying to figure out who she wants to be and Prieto trying to figure out how to get back to who he used to be. Through it all, I was reminded of the existential warning: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

I really love everything about this book: the dual setting of a changing, gentrified Brooklyn and of the hurricane-ravaged Caribbean island; the intriguing plot full of the larger political intricacies of the characters’ lives and of the smaller (but no less complicated) personal relationships and entanglements; and the rich, layered characters themselves—none completely free of fault or bound to judgement. I really wanted to fight for these characters: Olga and Prieto and Matteo. And my heart really hurt for the ones who left: Papi and Abuelita and Blanca—their mother, more myth than maternal figure. And it’s through Blanca, the revolutionary mother, who pushes the story forward through manipulative missives and eventually brings her children closure when they are finally able to see beyond the lore and understand: “‘It’s about not chasing an external ideal, not trying to fit someone else’s vision of you and instead building a community of people who simply accept you as you are’” (276).

An interesting blend of romance, politics, social unrest and family drama. Olga and her brother live in the shadow of activist parents, feeling unworthy of the dreams their parents had for them.
"What thing could I achieve that would make me feel...enough?"
It takes a tragedy for them to find themselves and make a difference in their own way.
It was well-written and provides a true sense of family and of place- Brooklyn, New York.

3.33⭐ Xóchitl González’s sophomore novel stars strong, creative women of color. Read my full review here.

Publication is expected March 5.

#NetGalley #MacmillanAudio #AnitadeMonteLaughsLast

Audiobook (mostly)

I loved this book - the audio drew me in immediately and I enjoyed this story that gave me a little bit of everything: romance, family drama, politics, humor, and characters that cover everything from
wedding planners, mobsters, music moguls, terrorists, congressmen, to hoarders.

Thanks, Maya! ❤️

Took me a while to finish it but I liked it.

Very good. Entertaining read but also interesting Puerto Rican view and history. The Brooklyn details are fun. A little long for the story told, but a good story about family loyalty, paternal love (or lack thereof) and national pride—how it can all be good and bad or just good or just bad.

Someone once told me that there is a theory that the whole of a story is told in the opening few paragraphs of a book. I have taken this to heart and so was a little disappointed to read about wedding napkins, the type of linen they are made out of and how well they absorb spilt liquids. But of course, these are a signal that wealth and capitalism are going to be important elements in this story, and so they are.

Two siblings, Pietro and Olga, are raised by their grandmother and extended family in the Puerto Rican quarter of Brooklyn. Olga becomes a wedding planner and her brother a Congressman for the local area. They are both invested in their culture but have made their way in a wider America through sheer hard graft. And of course, they have secrets, secrets which start to become millstones around their necks until Hurricane Maria devastates Puerto Rica forcing them to rethink their lives.

I didn't really know anything about Puerto Rica and so had to look it up because Olga frequently says that she is American and indeed PR does occupy an unusual space: it is an incorporated territory of the US - an island that is neither a sovereign state nor a US state. It is somewhere that slips between the cracks and that leaves it open to corruption and corporate greed particularly after the hurricane. So this is also a story about identity, the power of the elites and marginalisation of the poor and outsiders.

What really stood out for me, however, was the role of Olga and Pietro's mother. When Olga was twelve her mother left them with their father to go and follow her own dreams and become a leader of a revolutionary group in PR. The children had no means of contacting her although she would send them letters, making it clear that she knew intimate details about their lives and usually letting them know how disappointed she was with them. When Olga left to go to university, intead of praising her, she sent the following:

These bourgeois institutions that do nothing but reaffirm that in a captialist society there are those annointed to rule and those born to serve. Do not confuse admission for a chance at power. This kind of college has no place, even if they offered you one of their precious 'affirmative action' spots. They do not want to teach your people's history; they don't want to read your people's books. They see no value in our culture, or the culture of any minority people.
p67

By the time I had read the first of these letters, I hated their mother. Her letters were manipulative, always critical and demanding, insisting that her children think like her even though she had abandonned them. Amongst all of the issues raised in the book, I think she is the engine of the story, sitting far away, pulling the strings of both siblings.

The book asks us to consider what being a mother means and how much people can expect of us if they left us when we were young. As with so many secret and hurtful ties, they often improve with daylight and eventually can be cut.

If you were asked to categorise this novel by genre, it would be a challenge. When it started it had the feeling of a rom-com - wealthy wedding planner who can't have real relationships. It then slowly morphs into a political thriller when the mother is introduced and her hard- line politics are revealed along with the fact that she knows what her fam½

Reading allows us to experience lives nothing like our own. Am I a high society wedding planner of Puerto Rican descent? Am I the child of a drug addicted father with AIDS and a militant activist mother who abandoned me to be raised by my grandmother when I was a young teen? Am I trying to figure out my life, my relationships, and where my heart is? OK, maybe yes to that last one but definitely no to the first two scenarios. And yet, in reading Xochitl Gonzalez's novel Olga Dies Dreaming, I can step into the shoes of a character who answers yes to all of these questions as she tries to figure out what the American Dream really means and who it applies to.

Olga is a wedding planner for the rich and famous after having been featured on a reality tv show. She is incredibly sought after and successful, even if she sometimes pads her bills or overbuys and charges her clients for these "mistakes." Her brother Prieto is a Congressman representing a gentrifying LatinX neighborhood, one that, at least initially, thinks he hung the moon and is undeniably one of them. Olga and Prieto have a close knit sibling relationship but that doesn't mean they don't have secrets from each other. And their secrets are big ones. The person who seems to know both of their secrets is their absent mother, Blanca, who sends them well-informed letters when either of them make choices that stray from the path she wants them to tread, the path that she herself has taken, backing, and, if necessary, fighting for an independent Puerto Rico. As Hurricane Maria barrels down on Puerto Rico and then in its devastating aftermath, both siblings will face reckonings.

Gonzalez has drawn complex and interesting characters in this personal and political family drama. She liberally sprinkles political and historical information throughout the novel, some of which is organic and some of which felt a little forced. She tackles immigrant life and expectations, classism and capitalism, racism, political corruption, the Puerto Rican Independence movement, family trauma, and oppression as her characters look to find themselves and face the difficult things that their pasts have contributed to even as they come to terms with their Puerto Rican heritage. The story bogs down in the middle and the pacing remains mostly slow. The ending, which is set in 2025, picks up the pace but is a bit of a neatly tied bow. It does give a sense of how Olga and Prieto have grown and come into the truth of themselves and imagines an interesting ending/beginning for Puerto Rico. I mostly enjoyed this novel but I had to refresh myself on it to write this review so there was nothing special enough to stick with me long term.

This might be my favorite audiobook of 2023. I really lived the characters and all their flaws. It felt so real.

Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a powerful novel about art, race, class, and feminism with her latest book, Anita de Monte Laughs Last. In the 1980s, Anita de Monte is making a name for herself in the art world when she falls for the famous sculptor, Jack Martin, and slowly begins to lose herself. 15 years later, Raquel is studying art history at Brown and writing her thesis about Martin when she begins to see there might be another story there. Gonzalez goes back and forth between the two eras and the two Latina women’s voices as they struggle with similar challenges. Readers who enjoy strong female characters and don’t mind a hint of magical realism will definitely want to read this imaginative spin on the New York art world and who gets the power.

Excellent story. Complex characters that are sympathetic and aggravating in a real way. It's nice to see someone address the messed up way Puerto Rico is treated, and in a realistic context. Despite myself I was super invested in the family dynamic, horrified and frustrated and invested.
My two complaints are that this should come with a trigger warning for a rape scene that in my view wasn't necessary, and dealt with rather perfunctorily. The stakes were enough without throwing that in to raise them; we see that too much as it is.
The ending, as well, is a bit too pat, not that these characters don't deserve some resolution, but it feels like a very different grade of writing.

Spoilers Abound.
This is well written & I see why people like it.
However it made me angry.
The mother is a monster. And she is a revolutionary. I am sure it happens. Mothers of different sorts are monsters. [see that Anne Tyler book I read recently.] But the mother who is a monster because she puts the revolution before her family is a tired cliche and I believe that people who want change but are afraid of revolution get caught in that tired cliche. I think it is a cliche that harms women who do choose to work for revolution/change and who also love their children. Women are told they have to put their children first or they are bad mothers but, in fact, a woman can be dedicated to change in the world and can also care deeply for her children and can also be a fine mother. And to me that is a much more interesting story.
I also felt that Olga and her brother both get let off the hook way too easily. We can understand why they do bad things without feeling that we should cheer for them. I'm not sure why the perfect, idealized Matteo fell in love and stayed in love. I don't know if that's supposed to be believable or just romantic.
I guess the brother didn't get caught up in the corruption scandals because he sold his votes for silence & not for money. But wouldn't the bad guys have made sure he was more compromised? Also when all the info about corruption on the city council came out, didn't anybody notice that the brother was also voting the way that the bad guys wanted him to vote? I don't understand how he was able to maintain a political career. That seems very cynical.

Sincerely, Fran

Olga and her brother Prieto are ambitious children of the Puerto Rican diaspora, she is a society wedding planner, and he is a congressman. Their parents were both radical left-wingers, but they are now virtually orphans, with their father dying, and their mother abandoning them.

Despite their apparent success, both have secrets that blight their lives. Both are also trying to deal with the implications of their mother's abandonment for their childhood and adulthood. Olga has great difficulty forming romantic attachments, and also questions whether the business she runs is a worthwhile career pursuit.

When Hurricane Maria smashes Puerto Rico, both Olga and Prieto are forced to dramatically re-assess their lives and finally deal with their abandonment.

Couldn’t get into it. DNF.

Very good. I enjoyed the audiobook & the story.

Love a well written book that both draws me in, teaches me something, helps me to understand the world better, and advocates for change. 2023 read.

Olga and her brother Prieto live in New York. He is a popular congressman and she is a successful wedding planner. Their mother is Blanca a Young lord turned radical that left her children when they were in their early teens to be raised by their grandmother. Their mother comes back into their lives after hurricane Maria devastates the island of Puerto Rico. Their lives are turned upside down.

2023 TOB—this book served two purposes. It tells the story of the Acevedo family and the story of Puerto Rico.
Olga and her brother Pedro were abandoned by their mother as adolescents. Their mother became a Puerto Rican revolutionary. Olga is a high class wedding planner, a sell out according to letters by her mother and Pedro is a politician who doesn’t do enough for Puerto Rico. I really didn’t like their stories which is why this book is only getting 3 stars. I truly didn’t care what happened to them.
The story of Puerto Rico was much more interesting. It’s embarrassing for me to admit, how little I know of it. This book has inspired me to learn more and understand more too.

I definitely could have lived without the overly long political diatribes sprinkled throughout, but Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez wouldn’t be the same book without them and I can live with that. Olga seems to be living the high life as one of New York’s most sought-after wedding planners, but her life has always been overshadowed by her mother who abandoned their family when Olga was young to pursue her radical political agenda. She and her brother, now a congressman, have spent their lives trying to impress their absent mother, but also represent the Puerto Rican pride she instilled in them. Olga Dies Dreaming follows the siblings during a time of political unrest when their mother and all she represents reenters their lives and reeks havoc — both professionally and personally. Gonzalez has written a memorable, multi-faceted character and given her great history and plot to create an excellent novel well worth the read.

While I appreciate the GenX main characters grappling with their mother's inadequate mothering, a lot of the plot of this novel feels plodding to me. It feels at times like elements are included for educational purposes rather than for story purposes, and that's somewhat tedious for me. I really like Blanca's letter about the way that women abandon their dreams and take on their partners', but that message is undercut by the rest of the story.

Olga Dies Dreaming: A Novel, Xochitl Gonzalez, author; Almarie Guerra, Ines del Castillo, Armando Riesco, narrators.
This book has garnered so many accolades that I thought I would absolutely love it, and I settled into reading it with great expectations. I am not sure what it is about this book that is so beloved, by so many, because I was disappointed with the language, which was foul, and the message which was highly anti-America. I can understand the author’s desire to promote Puerto Rican independence, however, I cannot understand, and I find it very hard to tolerate, her abject hatred for some of America’s leaders and for American leadership, the very obvious major theme of the book.
Basically, the book is about a family whose ancestors and immediate family originally came from Puerto Rico. The author presents a great deal of history about the country. The lives of these characters seem to be filled with disappointment in this, their adopted country, and also in the way it has established its rule and control of Puerto Rico. Their mother wants to free the country from colonization and seems to be willing to do anything to accomplish this goal, even breaking the law and causing death and destruction. She is manipulative and very extreme in her views.
Pietro and Olga have grown up with a father who was addicted to drugs and died of Aids and a mother who abandoned them to start a band of revolutionaries in a remote area of Puerto Rico. How they handled the emotional trauma of their lives is described in detail. How they handled capitalism is another issue they struggle with, since although they enjoy the fruits of their labor, they often resent how their money is made and those who have more than they do. The class divide is a major thorn in their backs. What comes through as a main message in this novel is their ultimate dislike of our Capitalist society.
Olga is a wedding planner and Pietro is a politician. Their relationship with each other is close but sometimes also is rocky and fraught with secrets. Peitro’s sexual orientation is hidden, though it is not a well kept secret, and Olga’s sexual promiscuity is not a secret at all. Both of them engage with less than reputable characters, conducting borderline criminal activity, or outright criminal activity, to benefit their lifestyles. They seem eager to find and accept excuses for their illicit behavior.
There is not one progressive message left out of this novel, and if you are not progressive in the extreme, you may find it offensive and be unable to complete the reading of it. However, those who believe in the cancel culture and the demonization of America, as opposed to loving the country and its democracy, should adore the author and the book. Only one character seems to be very likeable, and that is Mateo, who although troubled emotionally, is the only character not engaged in any behavior that is intentionally meant to hurt another. He seems without anger, though he is bereft about his mother’s passing and has never fully recovered from the loss. There is also, perhaps, one aunt who is less distasteful than the rest.
Olga, especially, accepts little responsibility for her wanton an selfish behavior, believing it is her right to conduct herself in any manner she chooses, leaving disappointed men and friends in her wake. She engages with unsavory characters to fill her coffers even as she rejects the idea of capitalism being a worthy pursuit. Olga takes the reader into 2025 when her mother, perhaps unhinged, finally commits an act of sabotage so great, but not unexpected, that she is horrified. Her reaction to her mother’s crime, however, may startle some readers.
The reader is constantly subjected to a hate-filled, insulting dialogue that I found hard to absorb and many may also feel the same way. I wondered why anyone in America would laud a book that hates America with so much passion and belittles its policies and accomplishments with so much fury. The disgraceful comments about the unnamed President in 2017, whom everyone will recognize, were so radical and politically biased, the author should possibly have edited them out, or at the very least, felt shame writing them. Instead, the left wing of the publishing industry promoted her anger and her hate, as well as her “woke” agenda and narrative that grew more hypocritical as the book developed.
The author falsely blames the conservatives for the disgraceful cancel culture, after Olga’s business began to fail because of her remarks made during a television interview about America and its response to Hurricane Maria, which destroyed parts of Puerto Rico. Yet it is well known that the only ones canceling speech and personalities, are the Progessives and Democrats. They have also engaged in canceling all opposing views, which is exactly what Olga and Pietro’s mother would like to accomplish in Puerto Rico.
Every dysfunctional aspect of society is promoted or sponsored by the narrative, and the blame for anything Olga or Pietro dislike is placed squarely on the shoulders of the right side of politics. The two of them believe in random, perhaps unprotected sex, and one of them suffers the consequences. The book promotes racial animus, points fingers at white nationalists, and supports the idea that the approach to natural disasters on the island, that are not given the attention they deserve because they are not gringos, coupled with corporate greed, is responsible for Puerto Rico’s failures and lack of advancement as a country. The fact that Olga had been greedy, while living a successful if not necessarily totally honest life, and Prieto had advanced to an elected position of power, even as he behaved irresponsibly, and often dishonestly, was largely treated as acceptable and normal. Both had their behavior praised by left wing moderators as in the comment about “truthtelling” by the author, regardless of whether that idea even was truthful. Furthermore, Don Lemon is good and FOX NEWS is evil which tells you that the author is not hiding her bias at all. In addition, the narrator’s tone is so sarcastic when speaking about the right, and so heartfelt when speaking about the left, that she is also prejudiced even as she does an admirable job with the audio.
With less than 100 pages to read, I almost gave up on the book. It appeared to be nothing more than a Progressive treatise that trashes President Trump mercilessly and disrespectfully and promotes revolution to right their perceived wrongs. One character even shamefully calls Trump a useful idiot, which is an oxymoron since the Democrats, in 2020, in a highly controversial election, have actually elected, perhaps, the only useful idiot ever before to live in the White House. No references to the current left-wing failures are address, although the book travels to 2025, since it is obvious that the author is a “woke” socialist. She makes no attempt to hide it.
The book is for a particular audience of radical progressives who bridge no compromise and no conversation of alternate views. Since I am not in that category, I literally felt assaulted by this book’s message and horrified that the author shows no gratitude whatsoever for the benefits this country has provided herself and her ancestral homeland. This is a political book that seems to encourage the overthrow of American control in Puerto Rico by any means, violent or peaceful.
This country provides opportunities for millions of people who risk their lives to arrive on these shores. I was stunned that the author portrayed America and its leaders so deplorably. Capitalism is described as the enemy of Puerto Ricans, even as they continue to come here to advance in our economic system. The author uses a despicable term to describe people of Puerto Rican descent, a word that I have not heard in decades. I lived in Brooklyn and only coarse, ignorant and crude people used it. However, this author thinks nothing of describing white people as “gringos” who are bad. Gringos are racist. Gringos are white and evil. Why does a white population not object to this kind of thinking?
The characters had no code of ethics or sense of morality. They appreciated nothing in their lives and seemed bent on trashing America only for their lack of success. Puerto Rico’s failure to advance is blamed not on Puerto Rico’s policies, or Puerto Ricans, but on America and Americans. I found the author to be too angry and too strident in her approach. The following are some of the themes and characters presented throughout. Olga stands for personal freedom and reproductive rights. She is angry because her mother walked out. Prieto is trying to fit in and is for improving the environment and the LGBTQ+ community. However he is in the closet. Christian is black and gay and he commits suicide to illustrate the emotional consequence of being gay in America. Mateo is a hoarder, but honorable, and is also Jewish. He was devastated by his mother’s death and has not really recovered. Mr. Blumenthal is an elite, greedy businessman. To say more, would be futile. If you enjoy reading about these things, you will enjoy the book.

This book starts off with a discussion of napkins at a rich person’s wedding, so I anticipated this book would probably not be my cup of tea and it was not. It is an odd combination of melodramatic romance and social commentary regarding Puerto Rican issues. It is not really young adult from a content perspective, but it reads like a YA romance. I rolled my eyes many times at the dialogue. It is unfocused and too long. File this in the category of “good idea – bad execution.” If you like contemporary stories that check all the “currently trending” boxes, you may enjoy this more than I did.

The opening scene of this novel introduces Olga, a 40 year old woman, at a wedding, one that she has organised as a wedding planner for a very wealthy client. Her role is rather less glamorous than it sounds, and on the first page there is a discussion of the different quality of napkins, floor coverings and decor at wealthy people's weddings and those of ordinary people, even middle class people with good jobs.

This doesn't sound that interesting but the story quickly moves into a story of the effects of race and class and the complications of being Puerto Rican-American in New York City. Olga and her brother Prieto are highly educated at prestigious universities, and have built apparently very successful careers, but both are struggling with their family history and some difficult secrets. Prieto is a politician, and is worried about his family and some of his more socially conservative Puerto Rican voters discovering that he is gay. Olga is caught between competing demands from lots of different people and her own ideas of what she should be.

I really enjoyed this story of Olga and Prieto dealing with a new understanding of who they are and their own and their family's history, the mixture of serious issues with warmth and humour. I was interested to read about one of New York's largest ethnic minority communities and the complexity for the Acevedos of being both New Yorkers and Puerto Rican.

I found the story of their parents a bit more difficult. Their parents were revolutionary political activists and their mother left the family to go underground, and communicates with her children through a series of letters which are quite unpleasant in tone. Their father was more active in bringing them up but when he dropped out of political activity he ended up turning back to drugs and died young from AIDS contracted through injecting heroin, not helped by other health issues from his drug use. I think I'd have probably liked the political activist mother to across as a better human being and more caring parent.

There are also some nasty capitalist villains, and yes, that to me was a plus.

All in all, Olga Dies Dreaming is a great, thought provoking read.½