Goodbye, Ramona

A Novel

By: Montserrat Roig, Catherine Lacey - introduction, Megan Berkobian - translator, María Cristina Hall - translator

A vivid, multi-generational novel, following three women from the same family as they explore their relationships to dreams and desire, unraveling a historical and social mosaic of a dynamic, tumultuous Barcelona —a classic by “the shining light of Catalan literature” (Colm Tóibín)

“I’ve been chasing Chimeras all my life.”

Three generations of women—grandmother, mother, and daughter, all called Ramona—come to life in the pages of Montserrat Roig’s Goodbye, Ramona. The eldest Ramona lives quietly with her well-meaning husband, but longs for the romance and adventure of her favorite nineteenth-century novels. Her daughter, Ramona Ventura, is a middle-class housewife who finds herself constantly tending to her husband's violent outbursts. The youngest Ramona falls for a university student whose progressive ideals are undercut by his condescending treatment of her. Each woman represents a struggle of their generation, and yet, despite their different cultural contexts, they all navigate the same circumstance: a life limited by silence—about the men in their lives, the violence of Franco's dictatorship, and their genuine dreams and aspirations.

But the youngest Ramona is lucky enough to be growing up in a Barcelona on the brink of revolution, when women are finally beginning to reclaim agency. Will she break free from the fate of the women who came before her and build a life that is loud, centered on her own happiness?

Intimate, vivid, and enchanting, Goodbye, Ramona is an unforgettable novel about the weight of history, agency, and the enduring power that family holds over all of us.