Hurricane Season ★★★☆☆

Hurricane Season (Click Here To Buy)

★★★☆☆

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor is a fiction book about a witch that is killed in Mexico.

I bought this book from Myopic, a fantastic used bookstore in Chicago.

Set in a small town in Mexico, the story is told from the point of view of multiple people directly and indirectly involved with the murder. These characters are each wrapped up in their own trauma and desires and as a result are poor narrators. In each chapter you learn more about what happened that led to the witch's murder as well as the backstory of the character who is telling it. Melchor shows how poverty, drug use, marginalization, and sexual abuse directly shape communities.

Straight out of the gates, I have to let you know this book was not for me. I almost gave it 2 stars due to it being too graphic, too violent, and too sexually brutal, but I decided that just because it was difficult to swallow due to its unflinching intensity doesn’t mean that it’s 2 stars (in my rating system). What Melchor does do undeniably well is all in her literary presentation. There are no paragraphs in the book, the sentences go on for sometimes an entire page, and this makes it feel like a whirlwind taking the reader by storm, which connects beautifully with the title. Originally written in Spanish, I cannot imagine what it was like to translate - big props to Sophie Hughs! Should you decide to read this book, go into it with a big trigger warning.

If you liked Hurricane Season, I also recommend Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin, Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs Jr., Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, and i’m thinking of ending things by Iain Reid.

Happy reading!

Ms.Bjork