Review: 'Olga Dies Dreaming'

 ©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

Olga Dies Dreaming
By Xochitl Gonzalez
Literary Fiction
Flatiron Books

Olga is a successful high-end wedding planner, daughter of Puerto Rican activists, and sister of a media star congressman. What's most important to her right now? Some dodgy paperwork to present her cousin with expensive, heirloom-worthy linen napkins at her upcoming wedding.

So, is Olga Dies Dreaming, the new novel by Xochitl Gonzalez, a frothy tale about a woman and her familia? Let's just say it has a lot to say about family dynamics.

Olga and her brother, Prieto, were left by their mother, now a fugitive activist fighting for Puerto Rican independence. Their father, a Vietnam vet, died of AIDS as a broken-hearted junkie who loved music and his children, but who loved the needle more.

Their grandmother raised them with unconditional love. Both are accomplished, successful adults who are close to each other. Of course they are both hiding pain. And as the story deepens, the reader learns about the what and why of their pain. And how it affects what happens in the rest of the novel.

Olga has shut her heart up. She has an ongoing relationship with the rich owner of a chain of hardware stores, but she isn't in love with him. Olga had one other serious boyfriend as a young girl. Reggie is now a wildly rich music mogul with diverse investments and a renewed interest in his own Puerto Rican heritage. And now there is a new man who has appeared. Matteo is his own true self, even when it comes to admitting his flaws and fears.

Prieto is divorced and has a young teenage daughter. He's been hiding his homosexuality from even himself, but that's no longer an option. He is afraid of how his family will react, even more than the voters or the media.

Both sister and brother have received letters from their mother over the years, although she's never visited or even called them. She exhorts them to remember who they are and to not sell out. Nothing they do is ever good enough, because they are not as committed to her cause as she is. 

By the time the personal, professional, racial and cultural aspects of their story propel each other to some potentially disastrous decisions, it is difficult to not be worried for both Olga and Prieto. It's easy to see how badly things can do. So easy to see that it would be understandable if one decided to put the book down and, say, listen to music for a spell.

But it is so worthwhile to return to the novel. To find out what happens. And so see what happens when even people who love each other acknowledge that they haven't been brave enough to be completely honest in the past, but they're trying now. 

At one point, Olga wonders about someone who collects so many certain objects that the word hoarding is apt. What pain caused that hole in the heart that the objects are an attempt to fill it back up? What Olga doesn't know at the time is that she, too, has a hole in her heart. Every main character in the novel does. And the ways in which they seek to fill those holes show both how loving and how wounded, how willing to heal and how wounding, people can be.

Olga Dies Dreaming is a fascinating look at how the personal is part of the larger story -- of a family, of a culture, or a heritage that all can serve as foundational and supportive for someone to become their best true self.

Review: 'Fire Season'

 ©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

Fire Season
By Leyna Krow
Literary Fiction
Viking

Before Washington Territory was granted statehood, a fire swept through downtown Spokane Falls. The cause was never determined and the town was rebuilt larger and more grandiose than before. One way of looking at why the town burned underlies the story in Leyna Krow's Fire Season. 

The story of the fire is not the subject of the novel, however. But it does serve to illuminate the story of a woman of a certain kind, as Roslyn is dubbed by her father. The fire also sheds light on how damaged men would control such women, and what happens when they try.

On the eve of the Great Fire of 1889, Barton Heyward runs the only bank in town. He's certain no one likes him, no one respects him and he just got the worst haircut of his young life. Not even his favorite prostitute, Roslyn, likes him more than she likes the drink. So perhaps he'll just kill himself. He chickens out, the town burns the next day and he comes up with a way to enrich himself. If he can't be loved he can find another way to make himself feel better. Writing fake bank notes and charging hidden interest fees makes him feel clever.

That includes keeping Roslyn at his house under the pretense people think she set the fire. People don't actually think this, but Barton isn't just deluding Roslyn. He's deluding himself, convincing himself that she is his great love, that she loves him and that they will go away together to begin a beautiful life. As Roslyn begins to clear her head from its alcohol-fueled fugue, she begins to think for herself.

Soon, another young man arrives in Spokane Falls. He is even less impressed with the people he meets than Barton. Quake Auchenbaucher was sent for because of his reputation for solving fire investigations as a federal government inspector. That's not who he really is, but Quake is ready to once again size up a situation, tell people what they want and make a tidy profit.

Barton seems a ready-made patsy for Quake's scheme. And the sooner Quake can get out of Spokane Falls, the happier he will be. The local police are a drunken gang, the town is full of stupid people and the only thing people seem excited over is the fare of a local waffle shop.

What Quake doesn't know is that Roslyn will come into his life, too.

And what both men don't initially know is that Roslyn, well, she can do certain things. Because she is a woman of a certain kind. Hints about what she can do appear during interludes between the sagas of the two men. Hints about women who can fly, who can intuit, who can have visions and who can levitate beyond their bodies.

As more is revealed about Roslyn and how she ended up in a Spokane hotel, more is shown about the ways in which women have to make the most of whatever gifts they have. And ways in which they can be punished for having those gifts. But Fire Season also shows that for a certain kind of woman who perseveres, grace is possible.

Fire Season does a superb job of portraying the aftermath of the Great Fire. It gives a feel for what Spokane Falls and other Western towns were like, in addition to their people. These portraits serve the greater story very well. 

Although there are serious themes displayed, there also is whimsy in this novel.

Review: 'Face" by Jaspreet Singh

©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene
By Jaspreet Singh
Literary Fiction 
Touchwood Editions

Mysteries within mysteries, whether scientific, academic or personal, are puzzled over in Jaspreet Singh's novel Face. As the mysteries are revealed, the ways in which they connect demonstrate just how complicated even the simplest-seeming thing can be.

Lila studied geology at university, but left India and became a science journalist. She enrolls in a fiction writing workshop and is paired with a woman in a face-studying exercise. They don't yet know each other's names, but they will get to know each other. And one of them will be dead in 51 days. 

The exercise is not comfortable to Lila, but she continues. And she imagines feeling responsible for this other person, who is named Lucia. Before they have a chance to talk when the exercise ends, a man appears in the classroom door to pick Lucia up. Lila is certain she has seen him before. But how and where is one of the mysteries to be unraveled in the novel.

When Lucia introduces her husband to Lila, she recognizes him as a former classmate of hers. But that cannot be. He died.

Lila's university days are recounted -- the group she studied with, her best friend, the boy her best friend fell in love with, and what happened during a field expedition that went very wrong.

Early on, Lila writes that she enrolled in the workshop because she wanted to "enter a character's consciousness". As the story progresses, the reader learns that Lila is revealing more of her secrets while considering the other mysteries in the story. 

The novella Lila is writing for the workshop attempts to connect two stories that she says do not belong together on the same page, although they are connected in real life. Singh connects those two stories together and brings in far more other stories and ideas. 

Face also has the reader consider such ideas as how caste and colonialism pervade academia and scientific research, and how scientific research founded upon lies works its way into generations of further research. 

Not everything is revealed in the novel. But that's part of the plan. When Lila's writing instructor tells the class that "we are the stories we tell", she notes:

We are also the stories we choose not to tell. In fact, we are more the stories we don't tell, cannot tell, or will never be able to tell.

Throughout the telling of the various stories in Face, the choices about what is revealed, what is not revealed, and when things become known propel the narrative. It's a remarkable exercise in how personal stories can affect the greater natural world, and how that natural world is a part of every person.

The subtitle to Face is A Novel of the Anthropocene, signaling that this is a story of the current geological age. It certainly is a novel about the effect of people on the natural world and on each other.