Hurricane Season, a novel about the unexplained murder of a "witch” in a bottomed-out Mexican village, as told by several unreliable narrators, does not have paragraphs. If this is a deal breaker, move it along. Author Fernanda Melchor did not come to coddle, she came to slay.
A popular Spanish language author making her debut in English translation, Melchor has written one bold and wickedly funny tour de force. Imagine a foul-mouthed Dickens meets Law & Order: SVU with avant-garde tendencies. Who killed the witch and why? Well, maybe they all did. Hurricane Season isn’t as much about murder as it is about conditions that foster it.
With loping urgency and conversational intimacy, Melchor takes the murder of the village bruja and brews up an unforgettable storm of desperate characters. In the mood for something different, maybe a little rough? Good or bad, Hurricane Season will get a reaction out of you.