Reviews with content warning for Police brutality - Hurricane Season

No sé si realmente hay talento o si Melchor simplemente dio en el clavo con esta fórmula de violencia gráfica.

TW/CW: violencia sexual, violencia física, abuso psicológico, violencia contra infancias, violencia de género.

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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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2treads's review against another edition

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dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Melchor writes with a ferocity that propels both prose and reader through the visceral setting. Brilliantly brutal and with utter clarity, a story unfolds that centres women and the undiluted realities within which they exist.

At the heart of the narrative is the Witch, her death, her usefulness, and the scorn held for her by all who came to her door seeking her remedies.

And as Melchor navigates the events leading up to it, she utilises each of her characters as a focal point for examining sexual abuse, poverty, drug use, despondency and desensitization, violence; all with a rawness that horrifies as well as arouses within the reader a sense of being in on the secrets, of understanding the town and its inhabitants.

The characters were also very interesting and were integral in maintaining the propulsive force of the prose: each with their own version, their selfishness, desires, trauma, shame and unreliability as revelation after revelation is revealed.

Content Warnings

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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