Chapter 18 'Favors': Summary, Themes, and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Olga arrives at the family home in Brooklyn and is greeted by her niece Lourdes, who is making tulle ribbon bows for champagne bottles. Lourdes has grown noticeably over the summer, and Olga feels a pang of guilt for having missed so much of her niece's life while working. Mabel, Olga's cousin, calls down from the top-floor rental apartment where she has been living with her fiancé Julio, and Olga quickly realizes the entire house has been converted into a production line for Mabel's wedding favors.

The favors are an elaborate undertaking involving at least five aisles of the crafting store. In the garden level of the house, relatives occupy every corner: cousins cover champagne bottle labels with stickers bearing Mabel and Julio's photo and wedding date; Tía ChaCha affixes rhinestones in artistic clusters with tweezers; Lourdes dresses bottle necks with tulle bows on the porch; and Tío JoJo and one of Mabel's nephews place the finished bottles into clear gift boxes alongside flutes etched with the couple's names and date. Mabel surveys the operation like a general, correcting a cousin's label placement.

Olga is assigned to decorate gift boxes in the kitchen. When she laughs and questions whether another element is really necessary, the room falls silent. Mabel suggests that perhaps Olga's wealthy clients prefer something more refined, and Tía ChaCha—Mabel's godmother, who adopts Mabel's enemies as her own—defends the hand-placed crystals. The family waits for Olga's verdict.

Olga reflects internally that her wealthy clients no longer give wedding favors at all. Since the recession, they have deemed favors a form of conspicuous consumption and replaced them with donation-in-lieu-of-favor cards, offering an apology for inequity. In Olga's family, however, favors are never thrown away. Guests coo over them, drink the cheap champagne, and either reuse the flutes on New Year's Eve or preserve the entire package in a china cabinet, dusted weekly alongside favors from previous weddings. Even Olga, despite her fastidious nature, is superstitious about discarding favors and keeps an under-the-bed box filled with crocheted bridal gown toilet paper roll covers, engraved miniature picture frames, and glass swans on mirror ponds.

Knowing Mabel agonized over every label, crystal, and bow, Olga recovers with a tactful compliment: the packaging shouldn't take away from Tía ChaCha's work. Everyone laughs, and Olga privately notes her New England tact. She jokes about the sweatshop Mabel is running and requests music. With music blasting, Olga sits at the kitchen table adorning 150 clear plastic boxes with teal bows—onto which Ana, Tío Richie's current wife, hot-glues a large rhinestone—while Titi Lola cooks arroz con habichuelas blancas, Olga's favorite dish.

Key Events

Olga arrives at the Brooklyn family home and greets Lourdes, who has grown over the summer.
She discovers the house has been converted into a wedding-favor assembly line for Mabel's upcoming nuptials.
Relatives are stationed throughout the garden level: labels, rhinestones, tulle bows, and gift-box assembly.
Olga questions the necessity of decorating the gift boxes, and the room falls silent.
Mabel and Tía ChaCha defend the favors; the family awaits Olga's verdict.
Olga reflects on the contrast between her wealthy clients' donation cards and her family's treasured keepsakes.
She recovers with a tactful compliment and jokes about the sweatshop conditions.
Olga decorates 150 gift boxes while Titi Lola cooks her favorite dish.

Character Development

Olga — This chapter reveals the careful social navigation Olga must perform within her own family. She is aware that her success and her parents' absence have made her an object of both worship and resentment, and she knows that seeming less than enthusiastic about helping would trigger a day-long war with Mabel. Her internal reflection on her clients' wedding practices shows how far her professional world has drifted from her family's values, yet her superstition about throwing away favors—and her under-the-bed box of inexplicable keepsakes—reveals that she remains emotionally tethered to family tradition. Her New England tact is a survival skill, a way to smooth over conflict without surrendering her own perspective.

Mabel — Mabel is portrayed as controlling and defensive, running the favor operation like a general and eager to interpret Olga's comments as judgment. Her suspicion that Olga looks down on her choices suggests an ongoing tension between the cousins.

Lourdes — Lourdes's growth over the summer and her disappointment at missing playtime with Camille highlight the costs of the family's collective labor and Olga's absence from family life.

Tía ChaCha — As Mabel's godmother, ChaCha is fiercely loyal, adopting Mabel's enemies as her own. Her pride in the hand-placed crystals shows how seriously the family takes these crafts.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Class distinctions and conspicuous consumption — The chapter draws a sharp contrast between Olga's wealthy clients, who replace favors with charity donations as an apology for inequity, and her family, who invest enormous labor in elaborate keepsakes. The favors become a symbol of how different worlds mark celebration.

Tradition vs. modernity — The family's insistence on handcrafted, personalized favors stands against the wealthy's streamlined, socially conscious approach. Olga's tactful retreat shows her navigating between these worlds.

Family labor and obligation — The crafting army and Olga's sweatshop joke underscore how family celebrations are collective undertakings. Participation is not optional; declining to help would sour the day.

Superstition and keepsakes — Olga's under-the-bed box of crocheted bridal gown toilet paper roll covers, engraved picture frames, and glass swans reveals a private superstition that contradicts her fastidious public persona. Favors are not disposable objects but carriers of memory and obligation.

Chisme — The chapter notes that family celebrations are marked by planning, preparation, and postmortem chisme sessions, suggesting that the gossip and storytelling around events are as important as the events themselves.

Why This Chapter Matters

Favors deepens the novel's exploration of Olga's dual identity—the successful Manhattan wedding planner and the daughter of a family she has partly outgrown. The chapter shows, rather than tells, the labor and love embedded in family tradition, and it gives Olga a moment of quiet reflection on what her professional world has cost her. Her superstition about favors and her careful diplomacy with Mabel and ChaCha reveal a character who is more emotionally invested in her family than her polished exterior suggests. The chapter also sets up the wedding as a future gathering, with all its potential for conflict and connection.

Study Questions

1. How does the chapter contrast Olga's professional clients' approach to wedding favors with her family's approach, and what does this reveal about class and cultural values?

Olga's clients, conscious of weddings as acts of conspicuous consumption, have replaced favors with donation-in-lieu-of-favor cards—a gesture that apologizes for inequity while maintaining social distance. Her family, by contrast, invests days of collective labor in handcrafted favors that guests will preserve in china cabinets for years. The contrast reveals two different relationships to material objects: the wealthy treat objects as disposable and replace them with symbolic gestures, while Olga's family treats them as carriers of memory, obligation, and pride.

2. Why does Olga choose to compliment Tía ChaCha's work rather than defend her original question, and what does this reveal about her character?

Olga recognizes that the room has gone silent and that the family is awaiting her verdict. She knows Mabel agonized over every detail and that a negative judgment would sour the day and trigger conflict. Her compliment—framing the packaging as secondary to ChaCha's handiwork—allows everyone to save face. This reveals Olga's diplomatic skill, her awareness of family dynamics, and her willingness to subordinate her own aesthetic judgment to preserve harmony.

3. What does Olga's under-the-bed box of wedding favors reveal about her relationship to family tradition and superstition?

Despite her fastidious nature and her professional distance from her family's tastes, Olga keeps a box of inexplicable keepsakes—crocheted bridal gown toilet paper roll covers, engraved picture frames, and glass swans on mirror ponds. She is highly superstitious about throwing away favors from family affairs. This private superstition suggests that Olga's connection to family tradition runs deeper than her public persona admits, and that the objects she might dismiss as tacky in her professional life are, in her private life, protected and preserved.