Hurricane Season
Ratings60
Average rating4.1
‘'They called her the Witch, the same as her mother; the Young Witch when she first started trading in curses and cures, and the, when she wound up alone, the year of the landslide, simply the Witch.''
In a community where womanhood and equality are violated on a daily basis, the Witch becomes a mirror for actions that define the very character of the residents. Either a Witch or an Angel, she is there to bless and curse and cure while the women and the men of the village keep on hurting one another, while prostitution, violence and murder thrive. Devil is dancing, rituals are rumoured to take place, the spirits of the dead roam the land, La Llorona and La Nina de Blanco terrify the people. Each figure, each superstition becomes a blatant justification for all the hatred, the injustice, the discrimination, the mistrust, the poverty, the suffocation. Each chapter is a long paragraph, an endless scream for a world that seems stale, trapped in its own faults, unwilling to change.
Fernanda Melchor surely produces a powerful reading experience. However, the writing style troubled me significantly. I have no problem at all with the always-controversial stream-of-consciousness technique, but the frenzy, the hysteria, the violence, the endless wails made me breathless and at times exhausted and exasperated. Therefore, I can't say I thoroughly loved this particular reading experience. The last chapters became too vulgar, too cheap and shocking for the sake of it. I am not bothered by vulgarity and graphic violence as long as my tiny brain can fathom the actual purpose of it. In this case, I wasn't convinced and I confess I skipped the last pages, wanting the novel to end.
All in all, my expectations weren't met.
‘'They say she never really died, because witches don't go without a fight.''
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Heads up : IT'S RAW AND INTENSE!
The structure and the style of this book is interesting.
This is so intense and dirty - But it's such a page turner!!
Not the book for everyone, for sure. But definitely, the writing was powerful and clever, the way she handled the elements around the closed society!
One of the best novels I've read recently. The language is so disorienting and foul but at the same time is very evocative of this chaotic, drugged up, and sweaty landscape these characters live in. Also has almost every messed up thing you can think of in it and very graphic descriptions at that so not for the faint of heart.
This book will stick with me for a long time. I got half way and I was like “how am I going to write a review for this?!” This could honestly be considered horror, true gut wrenching horror. This book is depraved, disgusting, disturbing, but most importantly, human. The author gives you in depth thoughts from these monsters of man but somehow deep down in all the tar and gunk there is a twinkle of humanity. Not enough to feel sorry for them but enough to see they are just people and not some supernatural poltergeist. Which to me made this even more terrifying.
This is not an easy book to recommend, I personally jumped in blind from a YouTuber's list of disturbing books. The fact that this book doesn't have a formal trigger warning page is kinda insane. I knew it was going to be rough, but this? Are you okay Melchor? Is the translator okay? Are any of us okay?
“The rain can't hurt you now, and the darkness doesn't last forever.”
Hay veces que no queda más remedio que susurrar lo triste. Hay un México que ocurre al fondo de nuestra felicidad, allá abajo, dónde la tierra ha enterrado a un sinfín de gente, dónde el amor encontró odio y dónde el miedo es un estado eterno. No sé cómo recomendarlo. Es espeluznante. Sufrí mucho y al final se me escaparon las lágrimas. No voy a volver a leerlo jamás. Hay tanto dolor aquí, tanta incomunicación, tanta distancia, miedo indiferencia, violencia, que no hay de donde agarrarse de cara al vacío.
Reading this is like being in the eye of a hurricane. It's exhausting and full on but such a brilliant book.
This book is a lot of things, none of which are easy.
The first thing I noticed was there were no paragraph breaks. Just... none. The only reprieve the reader gets is when a new chapter starts and there are only a handful of them. Even the sentences snake on for pages at a time, refusing to let the reader take a breath.
It's all intentional and while grating at first, pushing through it unlocks something a lot deeper in this book. Just like Cormac McCarthy writes with sparse punctuation and refuses to use quotation marks for his dialogue, this book trudges forward using punctuation, or the lack thereof, as a bludgeon.
Because this book is brutal. If I had to guess, I'd say that Fernanda Melchor wrote this book angry, and I don't blame her at all. It's a book about poverty. Not about the kind of poverty a lot of books released in the US are about, but agonizing, inescapable poverty punctuated by constant violence. The publishing industry is so filled with books written by those of privilege and wealth that it's refreshing to not read a book about a well-off New Yorker sometimes.
The central premise of the book is that there's a witch in town. She provides a variety of services for the local women, most of which we learn about later on in the book. In a world where the only way to make money and support their family for most of these women is for prostitution, there aren't exactly women's health clinics around, if you catch my drift. This ‘witch' can help, along with other ailments as well.
The story unfolds from the perspective of a few characters, each in their own chapter, all based on the brutal murder of the witch by a few local boys. The reason for the murder unfolds when the reader is taken closer to the act itself by inhabiting the POV of the men responsible, each with a different understanding and reason for being in that van that pulled up to her house that evening.
Let's just say that extreme poverty, exploration of sexuality and the relationship between cycles of abuse, poverty, corruption, and homosexuality all end up tangled in the same web, eventually.
The conscious decision to write the book in this manner gives it a sense of movement, like a makeshift go cart wheeled up to the top of the hill, allowing you to jump in while it's in free fall, forcing you to be along for the ride with no real sense of control. You're just along for the ride, unable to look away from the horror of those rocks at the bottom of the hill.
Just beautiful.
Me siento sucio; necesito lavarme los ojos que leyeron, las manos que voltearon esas páginas asquerosas, la memoria del terrible ritmo de esta novela, bin ban sin parar sin tomar aliento sin alivio de la crueldad, la ignorancia, la maldad inhumana y yo sé que todos hacen lo mejor que pueden, que cada quien trabaja con lo que tiene pero esto me fue demasiado. Dió duro.Quize parar. Abandonarlo. Las ganas no me faltaban; mas persistí de castigo a mí mismo por mis quejas sobre la estructura de [b:The Taste of Sugar 50970150 The Taste of Sugar Marisel Vera https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1571125977l/50970150.SX50_SY75.jpg 73451645]. El contraste era irónico: oraciones de cuatro o cinco palabras en una, de cuatro o cinco páginas en la otra. Cada capítulo — son ocho — es un párrafo de monólogo interior nonstop, los pensamientos (si es que se le puede llamar pensar a las motivaciones de personajes tan bárbaros) e historias de creaturas primitivas y trágicas en un triste pueblito. Melchor pinta una escenografía espeluznante de un ambiente venenoso; un miasma de masculinidad tóxica, violencia, crueldad que el lector siente en los huesos. Una cultura de ensimismados, avaros, gente de pura mierda sin pizca de compasión ni conocimiento propio, envenenados por la religión y la falta de educación.No sé como recomendar este libro, ni a quien. Es un libro doloroso, que le quita a uno la esperanza. Toca temas de violencia a mujeres; abuso de menores; machismo requetetóxico; y la perpetuación de esa atmósfera de ignorancia, de barbaridad, de horror sin alivio. Mas con todo y eso, no puedo decir que me gustó, ni que lo disfruté, pero sí lo admiro. Melchor escribe con una fuerza impresionante, con pura pasión, y las historia, por dolorosa que sea, es necesaria oir.
The stream of narration pulls you along and leaves you breathless. I was captivated but also felt held captive, incapable of escaping the text's inertia and lack of periods.
A gritty portrait of a small Mexican town overrun with poverty, drugs, whores, abuse, gangs, violence. The novel circles around the murder of the local “witch” and every chapter presents a different characters life and point of view, slowly untangling the turn of events.
Relentless, and genius.
Que esté escrito de forma corrida, sin diálogos ni párrafos, y con un lenguaje coloquial me atrapó desde el inicio. A pesar de que aborda temas densos, no hice pausas significativas durante la lectura porque quería saber más: más de los pesonajes, más de su angustia, más del pueblo.
La escena de la súbita aparición del gato negro realmente me sacó un buen susto; típico cliché en las historias sobre brujas que la autora supo llevar maravillosamente.