Melchor settled, instead, on a work of fiction.
But in Veracruz, a journalist asking too many questions draws the wrong kind of attention. At first she imagined writing a Capote-esque work of nonfiction about the crime informed by interviews with the suspect and the village’s residents, an In Cold Blood set in Mexico. Melchor became fascinated with the story. A detail stood out: The victim was a known witch, and the suspect, a former lover, took his revenge when he realized the Witch had cast a spell for him to return. I highly recommend this if you enjoyed books like Milkman and The Mercies – they’re not exactly the same kind of book but they gave me similar feelings and I think readers who enjoyed those will enjoy this, too.While working as a journalist in Veracruz, Fernanda Melchor came across a report of a body found in a ditch outside a small village. The writing (and translation) are beautifully done, rendering this book a gorgeous and bleak portrait of life in La Matosa and the darkness in the hearts of its people, told through torrential and intense narrations. Even thought this book is in no way an easy read, it’s compulsive, intoxicating, rather short, and I devoured it. The author does something incredible with the way you read these difficult themes, reading about people who horrible things, and simply can’t stop reading – each character is deeply human, flawed and suffers their own traumas, become violent and abusive themselves, and I just wanted to know more about them and their lives. It tells the story of the death of the Witch in a small Mexican village from the point of view of several characters adjacent or directly related to the murder, and it’s a brutal account of violence, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, drug abuse and poverty. Hurricane Season is a powerful novel brimming with superstition, violence and humanity. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters-inners whom most people would write off as irredeemable-forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village. And the discovery of her corpse has the whole village investigating the murder. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughesįirst Publication Date: 6th October 2020 (translation)
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