Olga Dies Dreaming

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Parts 2-3

Parts 4-5

Parts 6-7

Parts 8-9

Parts 10-11

Parts 12-13

Parts 14-16

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “July 2017”

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Napkins”

Content Warning: This novel features brief descriptions of sexual assault, suicide, and intolerance toward gay people.

Napkins, the book’s narrator—Olga Isabel Acevedo—thinks, are a sign of how wealthy a person is, particularly at weddings. Olga, a Puerto Rican New Yorker, is a wedding planner. She tells the head waiter exactly how to fold the napkins for her client’s wedding, claiming that the bride intends to take the expensive linens home afterward. However, she also plans on taking some for her cousin Mabel’s wedding in the fall. She doesn’t actually like her cousin, who always competes with Olga. Mabel has been holding her engagement over Olga, but now Olga can get revenge using the napkins—her family will think that they’re classy, attributing that touch to Olga and not to Mabel.

Olga’s assistant Meegan reveals that Jan, Olga’s favorite catering captain, is not coming. When Olga calls to yell at the owner of the catering company about this, she learns that Jan is dead.

Part, 1 Chapter 2 Summary: “A Polish Wake”

Olga attends Jan’s wake, discovering that he died by suicide and that his Catholic family didn’t know he was gay. Jan’s boyfriend, Christian, who found his body, suspects that being HIV-positive heightened Jan’s depression. As they talk, Christian gets flustered, worried about rent now that Jan’s gone. Olga gives him money under the ruse that she owed Jan tips. She thinks about how Jan had to pretend to be straight for his mom, since mothers often have singular views of their children. Olga leaves and goes to a bar.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Hoarder”

In Noir, a dive bar, Olga plays songs she thinks Jan might have liked on the jukebox. A man named Matteo strikes up a conversation with her, despite her desire to avoid it. He’s a realtor. When he asks if she’s looking for a place in New Brooklyn, she is insulted: Her family has been in Old Brooklyn since the 1960s. However, she relaxes when she learns that he is from the South Slope.

Although he is a realtor, he does not appear as “slick and polished” (19) as the others she sees trying to sell properties in the area. She learns that he became a realtor after his mother passed away, and he wanted to take care of her property. Enjoying herself, Olga forgets that she came to Noir to be alone. Matteo thinks everyone in New York has a secret. For instance, he “kind of became a hoarder” (20). Olga volunteers that her secret is being “a terrible person” (21). She brings him to her apartment, where they have sex.

Part 1 Analysis

This first section of the novel is the only one not preceded by a letter from Blanca, and it allows us to get to know Olga without her mother’s scathing judgment or biases. As of July 2017, Olga has achieved her version of success: She is wealthy, has status as a well-known wedding planner, and is uninterested in a long-term relationship. These outward signs of having made it are in conflict for Olga with the Expectations of Others, especially her revolutionary mother, who disdains materialism.

Olga at first appears to be a ruthless businesswoman who is not above using her wealth for personal gratification or cutting a few corners. For example, she overcharges her clients for expensive linen napkins, all the while plotting to take home the leftovers. She then plans to use these stolen napkins, a sign of wealth, to one-up her cousin at her wedding. This outward display of wealth clashes with Olga’s inner monologue, in which she criticizes her ultra-wealthy clients for spending so much on napkins themselves. This cognitive dissonance is an important part of Olga’s characterization, as she has been raised to view the wealthy as enemies. She justifies her actions as acting like Robin Hood, since her cousin Mabel isn’t as well-off as she is and the napkins will add class to her wedding party, but this logic is clearly defensive and self-serving.

Olga’s empathy for working people, the marginalized, and those worse off comes out during Jan’s funeral. She cuts off Jan’s boss Carol’s rant about how Jan’s death means she’s down a good worker—while Olga wishes to make money, she doesn’t forget that her staff is human too. This incident foreshadows her rant about Puerto Ricans and the many ways in which the American government has ignored them—an aftereffect of American Colonialism—on Good Morning, Later.