Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

14 reviews

eleanorjmca's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is a savage, very bleak book about cycles of violence and pain, centred on one small community; ultimately it is about powerless people, extremely poor, controlled by drugs and gangs and money problems and superstitions and fear above all, who accrue tiny amounts of power to themselves by means of violence against other powerless people. Men, in particular, are the primary aggressors, with women the primary victims, but there is always a sense in which the greater aggressor is off screen, elsewhere, maybe at the Oil Company or even far away in another country. It is a loveless book, full of people desperately looking for affection and approval and vindication, as well as sexual pleasure, but unable to engage with anything in a non-violent way; the close relationship between love and violence runs through the whole book, culminating in the final scene when
the dead bodies receive the most genuinely affectionate words in the book from the gravedigger, having finally "escaped" from the world of suffering
.

This book's best quality is the author's incredible use of language, and the translator's skill in rendering it. The dense text (no paragraph breaks) and eternal run on sentences were off-putting at first, but soon made the book difficult to put down! The technique of going on a journey in each chapter through a particular character's train of thought, memories etc is very compelling. I also loved how the picture of what had happened on the night of the crime, and what had caused it, gradually came into focus through the perspectives of different characters. I have only ust finished this book and I want to go back and read it again! 

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bodiesinbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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ronpayne's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Hypnotic prose telling a horrible story. Please heed the content warnings!

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corinnereads7's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“They called her the Witch, the same as her mother; the Young Witch when she first started trading in curses and cures, and then, when she wound up alone, the year of the landslide, simply the Witch." 

Reading this book was like living through a violent, chaotic fever dream. HURRICANE SEASON is beyond fucked up. It is gory, graphic, and extremely disturbing. At times I found myself wanting to throw this book in the trash and set it on fire just so I wouldn’t have to continue reading the vile descriptions of horrendous acts of violence. That being said, I think the author intended to give us an unblinking look into the world of machismo culture, to make her readers see how destructive misogyny and homophobia truly are.

I wouldn’t say I “enjoyed” this book, but I did find myself glued to the pages while the mystery of the Witch was slowly unveiled. Sophie Hughes did a fantastic job of translating this odd novel from the original Spanish, with its long, twisty sentences that sometimes occupy two or three pages before returning to their initial intended point. I do wish she had found an alternative for the r-word though - or do translators not have the agency of choosing their words?

In a strange way, this book reminds me of ‘Sula’ by Toni Morrison. Like Sula, the Witch was ostracized from the community of La Matosa (unless of course, she was providing money or services) and cast as the source of all the town’s darkest indulgences. She was the scapegoat to be blamed for everyone else’s behavior, so that nobody would have to take responsibility for their own actions, least of all the men of the town.

If you can name a trigger warning, it’s probably in this book. 

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