Thank you to FitzCarraldo Editions for sending me a free ARC of Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor to read and review! This has not affected my opinion in any way.
Hurricane Season is exactly the kind of book I love: dark, gritty, and disturbing. Fernanda Melchor does not hold back. The International Booker shortlist is taking its readers to some dark places this year – and I’m here for it!
Overview
It’s set in a small village in Mexico, after the local ‘Witch’ is found dead and the whole village becomes involved in the investigation of her murder. The chapters are divided into different narrators, each one as unreliable as the last, and each horrifying the reader with some new act of depravity or brutality. If you like your characters broken, damaged, or with absolutely no moral compass to speak of then you’ll be in for a treat with Hurricane Season!
The Translation
The translation by Sophie Hughes (one of my favourite translators) is a dream! It must have been so difficult to translate, as Melchor does not believe in paragraphs or regular sentence lengths. They can go on for half a page or more but you can’t stop reading. As a result, you end up in this fevered reading experience where you just read and read. You grow continually more repulsed and yet you cannot stop reading…
Final Thoughts
Anger and pain pervade this novel and seep into the bones of the reader, making this one an unforgettable novel. It’s perverse, pushes boundaries, and utterly transports the reader to this remote village forgotten by society.
I wouldn’t recommend Hurricane Season to the fainthearted, but it is a dark gem of a book for those who can handle it.
If you missed my reviews for the other International Booker Prize shortlisted books, you can find them here:
If you enjoy my reviews, please consider using my Blackwell’s affiliate link to purchase Hurricane Season. I earn a small commission from any book you purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you!