‘Paradais’ by Fernanda Melchor    (2021) – 112 pages             Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes

At first, this story of the two teen boys Fatboy and Polo seems quite comical, but it takes a dark, dark turn. Both Fatboy and Polo are sixteen years old.

Polo lives with his mother and his pregnant cousin Zorayda. They don’t have much money, and Polo has dropped out of school, so he has to work as a gardener at a nearby luxury housing development.

Franco, the Fatboy, is one of the spoiled boys whose family lives in the luxury housing development. Fatboy is sexually obsessed with one of the neighboring well-to-do ladies, Senora Marian Marono. When Fatboy finds out that the Marono family leaves one house door unlocked all the time, he sneaks in there while they are gone to sniff her underwear.

Polo has total disdain for Fatboy and his fantasies, but since Fatboy has the money to buy alcohol Polo puts up with him. Polo hates his boss Urquiza who makes Polo work late performing useless tasks. Polo flunked out of school, and his mother made him get this job. Polo is disgusted with his situation.

Polo’s cousin Zorayda has moved in with Polo and his mother, and Polo has lost his room and his bed to her, and he sleeps on the floor in the living room.

Now Zorayda is pregnant, and the word is that she sleeps with every man in town.

The entire story of ‘Paradais’ is told from Polo’s point of view. We see the entire world through this young guy’s eyes. The writing could be described as stream of consciousness with long sentences and pages-long paragraphs. However these long sentences and paragraphs do not detract at all from the sharpness and vividness of the prose. Author Fernanda Melchor has captured the thought stream of this sixteen year old boy perfectly. Sometimes it is a laugh riot; sometimes its a nightmare.

‘Paradais’ is a strong follow-up to Fernanda Melchor’s previous novel ‘Hurricane Season’. Like in the earlier novel, Melchor tells the truth about some very rough things. Fernanda Melchor is now on my short list of must-read novelists.

Having been a young guy myself at one time, I know that the author has nailed it, how a young guy’s mind works or doesn’t work. The two misfit teenagers Polo and Fatboy are as memorable a team as George and Lenny from ‘Of Mice and Men’.

Grade:     A

‘Hurricane Season’ by Fernanda Melchor (2016) – 210 pages            Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes

‘Hurricane Season’ is not for the squeamish or easily offended. The characters in this novel tell the truth about some very rough things. They are angry and the words they use are coarse and direct.

It takes place in the state of Veracruz which is near the eastern coast of Mexico. The Witch lives alone. The only people who come to visit her are the prostitutes and other women who want to buy some drugs or require her services from time to time. The police and some of the other guys in the town believe she has a lot of money stashed away somewhere in her house.

Much of ‘Hurricane Season’ is written from the stance of females’ righteous anger at “the full, brutal force of male vice”, although the females in this novel are not exactly exemplars of good behavior either.

The writing is crude, lewd, explicit, and powerful. This is savage eloquent writing conveying these women’s justifiable anger at men. Melchor’s writing is compelling and forceful in the extreme. Her sentences are long, sometimes pages long, with each phrase hitting home.

I cannot adequately convey the awful force of Fernanda Melchor’s writing in ‘Hurricane Season’ except by quoting some lines one of the women says to a pregnant 12 year old girl:

“Because if you don’t want it, I know someone who can help you, someone who knows how to fix these things. She’s half gone in the head, the poor dear, and between us she gives me the creeps, but deep down she’s a decent person, and you’ll see at the last minute she won’t take any money. You’ve no idea how many fixes she’s gotten me and the Excalibur girls out of . We can tell her to sort you out if you don’t want it. Or do you want it? You’d best make your mind up, mamacita, and pronto, because that bump’s not getting any smaller.”

All the gruesome and disgusting things revealed in this novel make for compulsive reading. One justifiable criticism of ‘Hurricane Season’ is that much of the obscenity, the violence, and the body part dismemberment might seem gratuitous. “Telling it like it is” is one thing; “Exaggerating the Horrific for Effect” is another.

One feature of ‘Hurricane Season’ which actually helps make it so effective is the extremely long sentences in which Melchor piles phrase upon phrase in a torrent of words. These sentences have a shattering impact and make for a gripping read. The trend in writing for the last few years or decades has been for sentences stripped down to the bare essentials. ‘Hurricane Season’ goes totally against this sparse trend, and it is so successful that it might itself start a new trend toward more expansive writing.

Read ‘Hurricane Season’ if you are brave and honest enough to take it.

Grade:    A