09/04/2023
A Peruvian immigrant and her 30-something daughter struggle to get along while sharing a Brooklyn apartment in Rivero’s heart-rending latest (after The Affairs of the Falcóns). At the outset, Flores discovers a cryptic note from her beloved late father Martin (“Forgive me, if I failed you”) tucked beneath the wooden urn holding his ashes. She’d love to uncover the meaning of the note, but is preoccupied by her finance job at the Bowl, an app startup with revenue problems founded by a college friend. Meanwhile, Flores’s mother, Paula, has just marked her two-year anniversary at the dollar store where she’s worked since the death of her husband from cancer, and pines for Vicente, a married man and fellow Peruvian. Flores questions her mother’s friendship with Vicente as much as Paula bemoans her daughter’s long hours spent in the office, wishing Flores would devote herself to finding a husband. Before Paula works up to sharing the truth about Martin, Rivero mixes up a stew of drama. First, office politics draw Flores into unexpected predicaments at the Bowl, where she’s caught between the managers’ competing visions. Later, Paula falls and hurts her arm after unexpectedly encountering Vicente with his wife. It all hangs together nicely, setting the stage for a surprisingly moving conclusion. This is a treat. Agent: Julia Kardon, Hannigan Getzler Literary. (Dec.)
Deeply compassionate and tender, Melissa Rivero’s new novel paints a striking portrait of the mother-daughter bond with wisdom and empathy. In alternating chapters, we see an immigrant mother and millennial daughter unfold and evolve—with stunning depth. Melissa is a phenomenal talent who combines authenticity and a bold, fresh voice to deliver raw, unforgettable women/characters. Not to be missed!” — Etaf Rum, author of A Woman Is No Man
“Intimate, elegant, and nuanced, Flores and Miss Paula is as much the story of a vibrant community in flux as it is about the immutability of love and the silences that bind a family. This is an absolute treasure of a novel.” — Patricia Engel, author of Infinite Country
“Melissa Rivero is magnificent. Her vision is clear, her characters are real, and her words are tender and true. In her newest novel, she writes about loyalty, money, loss, and love; she writes about home, the long path to finding it, and all the places we can go only when guided by an author so skilled.” — Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth
“Heart-rending. . . . This is a treat.” — Publishers Weekly
"Lively . . . . In a novel that is by turns dishy and soulful, Rivero braids depictions of the frivolity and self-seriousness of start-up life with the authentic and connected culture of Peruvian immigrants in New York City." — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Sensitive. . . . Wryly humorous and often tender, Flores and Miss Paula explores the generational divide between two strong women, the effects of grief, and the possibilities of change.” — Shelf Awareness
12/01/2023
Three years after the death of the family patriarch, 33-year-old Brooklyn-based Monica Flores and her mother Paula are still struggling with his loss in vastly separate ways. Paula, tired of a minimum-wage job, speaks up to get more responsibilities at work and navigates a complicated friendship with Vicente, a married man known to the family for years. Monica, a financial officer for an online start-up specializing in high-end aquariums and exotic fish, must pay off her student loans and her late father's medical bills. She trusts the wrong person and loses her job, but a chance encounter with an investor plays to her advantage. In dual narrations, Monica and Paula give their individual perspectives on their Peruvian culture, which Monica knows very little about, and motherhood and marriage, both traps in Monica's opinion, before eventually finding common ground. VERDICT Rivero's emotional plot explores a fragile mother-daughter relationship influenced by generational and cultural effects. An exciting second outing after Affairs of the Falcons.—Donna Bettencourt
Gisela Chípe and Liliana Montenegro provide nuanced alternating narrations in this contemporary audiobook about a strained mother-daughter relationship. Chípe portrays 30-something Monica Yolanda Flores, who shares a Brooklyn apartment with her recently widowed Peruvian-born mother, Paula. Chípe adeptly conveys Flores's sorrow and longing for deeper connections beyond her friendships at her finance job. Montenegro employs a mature, sensible tone for Paula, who is finding her feet at her job at a dollar store and in a possible relationship with an old friend, who is married. The transitions between the first-person perspectives of Flores and Paula are eased by the narrators' relaxed pacing. After the novel's early focus on workplace environments, patient listeners will discover the complexities of Flores and her mother's history and present life. M.J. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
2023-08-31
In gentrifying Brooklyn, a mother and daughter grapple with the death of their small family's patriarch and the ways his death cause them to reconsider their lives and values.
Three years after the death of 33-year-old Mónica Flores’ father, Martín, Mónica finds a small piece of paper tucked under his urn in the Brooklyn home she shares with her 63-year-old mother, Paula. In Paula’s handwriting, the paper reads: “Forgive me if I failed you. Remember that I always loved you.” This discovery—which Mónica keeps secret, despite her shock at its message—sets up the stilted relationship between mother and daughter and their navigation of grief and regret. Mónica (a.k.a. Flores, the name she adopted at work) is overworked and underappreciated at the Bowl, a tech startup selling “aquatic creations” (a refreshing break from the digital media startups that saturate millennial workplace fiction). Flores’ six-figure debt, as well as the impending end of her lease, weighs heavily on her mind, and she experiences a crisis of conscience when her colleague presents a plot to increase share prices at the expense of their boss’ position. Meanwhile, Paula spends her days working at a local discount store; taking walks with Vicente, a married friend with whom she shares a complicated past; and trying to figure out how she wants to spend “la tercera edad” of her life—years she’d imagined would be spent traveling between New York and Lima with Martín. Each judges the other’s decisions, and the disconnect and grudges they’ve carried since Flores was a little girl, once mediated by Martín, are amplified in his absence. Paula’s narration is the more affecting of the two perspectives; her insights about motherhood, marriage, and how both can feel like traps are simple but profound. Precarity—of identity, money, shelter, relationships, health—is the central tension for both women: How do we muster the strength and hope to move forward despite life’s fragility and disappointments? It’s a question rich enough to stand on its own; unfortunately, it’s crowded by side characters and minor plots. Still, Flores and Paula are so vibrant and endearing that they minimize these narrative frustrations.
An abundance of heart makes up for underdeveloped side plots in this story of life after loss.
