Our January Ink & Drink book club choice was Olga Dies Dreaming, a nuanced, tender, multi-generational exploration of Puerto Rican culture, political corruption, familial strife and the fallibilities of the American Dream from debut novelist Xochitl Gonzalez:
It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro 'Prieto' Acevedo, are bold-faced names in New York City society: Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying, Latinx neighbourhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the wedding planner to Manhattan's richest and most demanding clientele.
But the glamorous hoopla conceals a darker reality. Years ago, Olga and Prieto's mother abandoned her children to join a radical political organisation fighting for the liberation of Puerto Rico. Now, in the wake of the most devastating hurricane in the island's history, Blanca has come barrelling back into her children's lives.
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.
Let us help you discover this bestselling and powerful new novel with our Ink & Drink questions:
Olga and Prieto, albeit in different ways, are career-focused people who are invested in their Brooklyn community. In what ways do the trajectories of the two siblings reflect the differences in their relationship to Brooklyn?
How does Gonzalez use her characters to bring the discourse around humanitarian aid and relief to the forefront of the novel?
What did you think of Blanca's character being predominantly portrayed through her letters? How did the letter format impact on the reader's impressions of her, as well as on Prieto and Olga's engagement with her as their mother?
How do the changes to the neighbourhood they grew up in affect Olga, Prieto and Matteo? How do these characters reconcile themselves to the gentrification of Brooklyn and the changes that occur in their lives as a result?
Olga and Prieto have differing ties to their communities as well as their Puerto-Rican roots and heritage. Does one approach seem better than the other to you? How does their status as second-generation immigrants affect their lives and decisions?
On page 157, after helping one of the waiters at the party Dick tells Olga she embarrassed him by "acting like a maid". Olga replies by saying that her behaviour impressed the hostess, meaning that she is now likely to get hired to plan the hostess' daughter's wedding. Dick retorts with "you acted like a maid and now you'll be hired as one". What do you think Olga's choice of career tells us about her character and how do Dick's words influence her ideas about success and her work?
Olga and Prieto's mother abandoned them as children, and their father became a drug addict and died of AIDS not long after, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother and other family members. What does the siblings' respective relationships to their parents tell us about the nature of parenthood and family?
What did you make of the character of Matteo? What do you think he added to the novel and why do you think Gonzalez chose to give him the unique characteristic of being a hoarder?
While both Olga and Prieto make immoral or bad decisions in the novel, Prieto's decisions ultimately have more serious consequences on other people due to his political work. Do you think he is portrayed sympathetically in the novel? Can he be forgiven for his corruption or does he do more harm than good as a politician? How does his character's decisions contribute to the novel's commentary on politics as a whole?
Olga's name has a lot of significance in the novel. On page 275 she reveals that she was named after Olga Garriga, a "Brooklyn native, Puerto Rican nationalist and political prisoner arrested for protesting Law 53". Law 53, also known as the Gag Law, was an act passed in 1948 which worked to suppress the Puerto Rican independence movement. Her parents chose this name for her as they wanted her to be "ambitious". However, her mother also associated her name with the character of Olga from the Pedro Prietri poem Puerto Rican Obituary, who was "ashamed of her identity and died dreaming of money and being anything other than herself". How does Olga reckon with her identity in the shadow of the women associated with her name? What do you think she will die dreaming of?
We had a lot of fun reading Olga Dies Dreaming, which, despite dealing with heavy themes such as colonialism, gentrification and corruption to name a few, is also a social comedy full of heart and humour. You can buy your copy here.
For our next Ink & Drink book club, held on Wednesday March 29 at 6.30pm, we will be reading Alejandro Zambra's The Private Lives of Trees. The novel has been described as "one of the greatest literary events of recent years" and "a fleeting story translated with care – worth savouring". You can sign up and buy your copy here.
Veronica is late, and Julian is increasingly convinced she won't ever come home. To pass the time, he improvises a story about trees to coax his stepdaughter, Daniela, to sleep. He has made a life as a literature professor, developing a novel about a man tending to a bonsai tree on the weekends.
He is a narrator, an architect, a chronicler of other people's stories. But as the night stretches on before him, and the hours pass with no sign of Veronica, Julian finds himself caught up in the slipstream of the story of his life - of their lives together. What combination of desire and coincidence led them here, to this very night? What will the future - and possibly motherless - Daniela think of him and his stories? Why tell stories at all?
The Private Lives of Trees, Alejandro Zambra's second novel, now published in the UK for the first time in a revised translation by Megan McDowell, overflows with his signature wit and his gift for crafting short novels that manage to contain whole worlds.