Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor: A review

Oh, my, this was hard to read! It is an unrelenting verbal torrent of barbarity, trauma, and unrelieved evil written by its author in the grip of what feels like white-hot ferocity. Melchor is an acclaimed Mexican writer and this is her first book that has been translated into English, which is how I read it. My grasp of Spanish was not up to the task. Melchor's theme is the misogyny which seems endemic in Mexican society and the unthinkable violence against women that flows from it. The women characters in her novel are routinely abused, beaten, raped, and murdered and it seems that there is little consequence to the perpetrators. Thus, the understandable source of the writer's white-hot ferocity.

She tells us a story of the Witch; that's how she is known to locals. She is actually the Young Witch. Her mother, the Old Witch, is dead, but before she died, rumor had it that she had seduced and killed an old gentleman and his riches all came to her and are now hidden somewhere in the house where her daughter, the Young Witch, still lives. All this imagined great wealth elicits the envy and resentment of her neighbors.

But although they may resent or even hate her, under cover of darkness they come as supplicants seeking her help. Women who want help ridding themselves of unwanted pregnancies, jilted wives who want revenge against their wayward husbands and the husbands' paramours, and young men who have heard rumors that the Witch will pay for sex - they all beat a path to her door to present their pleas.

All of this passion, of course, is destined to end in tragedy. The Witch ends up dead in an irrigation ditch, one of the hundreds of yearly victims of "femicide" in her country.

Matosa, the village where all this horror takes place, is a cluster of cinder block shacks surrounded by cane fields. It is near the city of "Villagarbosa" which is Melchor's pseudonym for Veracruz. There is little work here and residents eke out a living from those who travel the highway, serving the sugar cane workers, truckers, drug traffickers, and the engineers traveling to the nearby oil fields. The atmosphere of the town is fraught with anxiety and dread as everyone in it is just one step away from becoming someone's victim.

The murder at the center of the story is examined from the perspective of four different characters: Luismi, a drug-addled former lover of the Witch; Luismi's cousin Yesenia who is one of the abused women who populate this story; Brando, a "park rat" who is an associate of Luismi; and finally Norma, a pregnant 13-year-old who is fleeing her pedophile stepfather and is taken in by Luismi and later assisted to an abortion by the Witch. All of the characters are in some way connected to Luismi who is in many ways a loathsome but also pitiable Melchor creation.

Melchor's writing is, as I at first described it, a torrent of words, reminding one, in fact, of the torrential rains accompanying hurricanes. The hurricane season of her creation features run-on sentences that sometimes go on for pages. Her language is lurid and filled with a profanity that seems to fit her subject matter. I find it very difficult to rate the book; I found it so hard to read that I'm afraid I'm not doing it justice. The jurors of the International Booker Prize didn't have my difficulty; it is shortlisted for the 2020 award. Oh, well...

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

Search This Blog