Flores and Miss Paula

July 1, 2023

Thirty-plus Flores and her mother, Paula, uneasily share a Brooklyn apartment, with Paula nudging work-focused Flores to find a husband and Flores nudging Paula to ask for a raise at her humdrum retail job. When forced to move, they confront their past together even as Flores finds a note Paula wrote to her deceased husband, asking for forgiveness. From the author of the New American Voices/International Latino Book Award--winning The Affairs of the Falc�ns. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 4, 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.

September 15, 2023
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 M�nica Flores' father, Mart�n, M�nica 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 M�nica keeps secret, despite her shock at its message--sets up the stilted relationship between mother and daughter and their navigation of grief and regret. M�nica (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 Mart�n. Each judges the other's decisions, and the disconnect and grudges they've carried since Flores was a little girl, once mediated by Mart�n, 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.

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October 15, 2023
A daughter and mother receive notice that they must leave their Brooklyn apartment in this novel told in three parts over the seasons--spring, summer, autumn--after the anniversary of their husband and father's passing. Rivero (The Affairs of the Falc�ns, 2019) tags each protagonist with the name she's referred to at work. The daughter is called Flores because the men at her job can never remember her first name. This stands in stark opposition to her mother, known as Miss Paula, and the respect she enjoys at her more modest place of employment. Flores is scrambling for success in the cutthroat world of start-ups and narrating in first person like an entitled, angst-ridden millennial. In alternating chapters, Miss Paula, an immigrant from Peru with much simpler goals, finds happiness climbing the ladder at the dollar store; she narrates in second person, addressing her chapters to her daughter in a heartfelt bid for understanding. As they navigate grief and seek relevance in their very different professional lives, each woman confronts the choices she has made and the daunting challenge of communicating across the generation gap.

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December 1, 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

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