A review by katie_greenwinginmymouth
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

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

5.0

Wow what a book to end 2020 on! Everything you’ve read about this book is true, it is fierce, challenging, unrelentingly and brutal. It literally gave me nightmares last night. Content warning for extreme violence, murder, rape, homophobia, sexual abuse... you get the picture. However the real thing that is striking about this book is the writing.

Each chapter is written from a different person’s perspective and the story of how the body of ‘the witch’ has come to end up rotting in the canal where it is discovered at the start of the book is revealed gradually and paced perfectly. The written style is very much like reading someone’s internal narrative or as if they are gossiping about what’s happened. Sentences run on into each other, tangents are followed and bits of the narrative are repeated and altered. In fact some chapters are virtually one long sentence. For that reason it really pays to set aside enough time to read each chapter in one go without a pause.

Everyone in this story is implicated in some way and everyone has their own reasons to tell only a partial history of what’s happened. It’s a phenomenally good way of telling a story that is set in a small, isolated community where rumours spread easily and where extreme economic hardships and changing social structures are testing any small sense of community there is left. I think Melchor does a good job of showing the context within which this community is living and the circumstances that drive people to behave in such brutal ways, touching on police and political corruption, patriarchal society and organised religion and changes in industry and employment opportunities (or lack of). If you can stomach it I highly recommend this.
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