Say ‘I do’ to ‘Olga Dies Dreaming’
The opening chapter of Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut novel, “Olga Dies Dreaming,” is all about napkins – wildly overpriced wedding reception napkins.
That may sound like a small cloth in which to wrap a big book, but Gonzalez folds those napkins into a satire of consumer excess, an appraisal of business morality and a study of family relations.
In short: Don’t underestimate this new novelist. She’s jump-starting the year with a smart romantic comedy that lures us in with laughter and keeps us hooked with a fantastically engaging story. A Hulu pilot is already in the works starring Aubrey Plaza, and given this source material, it should be terrific.
Gonzalez’s heroine is Olga Isabel Acevedo, a 40-year-old dynamo from South Brooklyn. At a young age, Olga set her sights on success and never wavered – not when her mother abandoned her and not when her father died after contracting AIDS. “Every single thing she had done with her life she had figured out for herself,” Gonzalez writes.
Now as the owner of a business she built from scratch, Olga charges wellheeled women in New York, Dallas and Palm Beach a fortune to plan their weddings. If that involves fencing liquor from Russian mobsters and overcharging brides for phantom place settings, who’s counting? After all, as a regular guest on
“Good Morning, Later,” Olga is the closest thing America has to a weddingplanner celebrity.
Presumably, Gonzalez is pulling at least some of these funny shenanigans from her own experience: She once worked as a wedding planner herself. But it’s the tremendous verve of her prose that makes these pages crackle – the way she captures Olga’s air traffic controller command of every incoming and outgoing waiter, caterer and vendor to create each client’s magical day.
Alas, while Olga can make every couple’s dream come true (for a price), she can’t seem to find romance herself. Even her own assistant notes, “You don’t have a single, actual romantic bone in your body.” Ouch! Although Olga has little use for God, she finds herself praying, “Please, let me know what it is to feel loved again.” If you know anything about how romantic comedy – or God – works, you have some idea of how this story ends, but you’ll be completely surprised by how it gets there.
As the novel opens, Olga is trying to extract herself from a zombie relationship with a hardware store mogul who thinks sending photos of his crotch is the height of courtship. Her latest one-night stand – picked up at a bar after a bad day – is Matteo, a swarthy sad sack who confesses that he’s a hoarder. Worse, he peppers her with intrusive questions about her professional dedication to rich jerks.
But when she tells him to get lost, Matteo won’t budge. “I’m not trying to diss you,” he says. “I’m just genuinely curious about you.”
That may be the most erotic thing anyone has ever said to Olga. After so many dead-end relationships, this odd guy who