When a daughter has a lot to learn from her mother
Melissa Rivero’s sophomore novel, “Flores and Miss Paula,” is a familiar, if uneven, tale of generational disapproval and resentment. We meet Paula Flores, a Peruvian- born, religious mother, and Monica, her millennial daughter, who browses hookup apps and juggles enormous student loan debt. The two have one thing in common: They’re grieving the loss of the family’s father and husband, Martin Flores, who died of cancer three years earlier.
As uneasy roommates in the Brooklyn apartment the family has rented for 20 years, Paula and Monica carefully tend an altar set up in Martin’s memory. One morning, not long after learning that their lease won’t be renewed, Monica finds what she thinks is a petition to the saints hidden in the family shrine. It turns out to be a note in her mother’s handwriting, asking for forgiveness. Monica has long suspected that Paula was disloyal to her father; this slip of paper seems to provide confirmation.
But Monica doesn’t confront Paula; communication isn’t their forte. The two women alternate chapters as narrators, and it’s clear from the beginning — maybe too clear — that the narrative arc will certainly include a mother- daughter journey toward better understanding of each other.
But the main foc u s o f R i v e r o ’ s plot is the women’ s very different professional identities. At the Bowl, the struggling fish and aquarium start- up where Monica works, she’s called “Flores,” thanks to a surfeit of Monicas on staff. (“It was better than being known as Finance Monica.”) At Dollabills, the neighborhood store where Paula is a clerk, she’s known as Miss Paula.
These naming distinctions — one in keeping with the clubby, male- led culture at the start- up, the other gently respectful — are emblematic of the women’s level of satisfaction in their workplaces. Monica, the first- generation daughter enmeshed in a dubious 21st- century industry, comes across as sour and miserable, while her mother is alive with possibility in a less prestigious job. Before Martin’s death, Paula cared for ailing people in the neighborhood; now, she prefers Dollabills, where she’s paid more and ( perhaps most important) the work isn’t as sad.
Meanwhile, Flores is well aware that the Bowl is a flimsy venture — and that its funding will run out in six months. She’s hanging on to her position only in hopes that the company will be sold for the kind of profit that will wipe out her debt and allow her to freeze her eggs.
Although we’re long past the era when every startup seemed bold and sexy, either in real life or in the ever- proliferating novels devoted to them, the concept of the Bowl is particularly dull, without the benefit of parody or genuine intrigue. Far too many pages of this slim book are devoted to the presentations of dismal earnings and tedious backstabbing among thinly drawn characters. It might have helped to have a few tidbits about the fish fetishists whom the ill- conceived Bowl is supposed to serve, but, alas, those are missing.
The point seems to be that old- fashioned brickandmor tar shopping is more honorable than some misbegotten internet enterprise. And maybe Monica needs her mother to participate in the U. S. economy she herself is so invested in before she can take Paula seriously. ( You can still be a brat in your 30s.) Ultimately, how these women independently navigate their jobs allows them to come together — and when they do, Rivero delivers a pleasingly heartwarming resolution with a useful message about not jumping to conclusions about one’s parents.