Hurricane Season

HURRICANE SEASON

by Fernanda Melchor

 

Nominations: Booker Finalist 2020, Carnegie Longlist 2021, Dublin Finalist 2021, National Book Longlist 2020

 

Date Read: August 29, 2022

 

In this tense and gritty novel, Melchor binds rumor, hearsay and morbid curiosity about a Witch in the local Mexican town. She is loathed, feared and despised while also alluring and entertaining. She often has the local boys over for drug and sex parties until one day those same boys turn on her in a gruesome display of violence. Although everyone can agree she is dead, found face-up in a canal under a seething pile of black snakes, no one can agree if her spirit has departed.

 

Living alone and separate from others, in a house that is careworn and disheveled, the Witch as the locals know her is actually the daughter of the Old Witch. No one knows by whom or when the Young Witch was conceived, only that she appeared one day under the Old Witch’s roof. 

 

The Witch is often called on for curses and cures and can induce an abortion from a concoction made in her kitchen. She won’t take money for her services, in fact, she doesn’t really acknowledge money at all, although the local folklore has it that she is hiding vast amounts of wealth. This wealth is partly the cause of her demise; the other is for nearly killing one of the boy’s girlfriends through a botched abortion.

 

In Melchor’s writing, the reader cannot know what is fact or fiction, which is entirely the point. The rumors surround the Witch are vast and change depending on the character reminiscing – she’s a murderer, an extremely  wealthy hermit, a man, a gay man, a host of drug and sex parties. No one knows which of these perspectives is the truth and which are conjured.

 

Written in chapters that are a single paragraph, in pages long sentences, the narrators divulge what they know of the Witch and almost every account seems conflicting. The narratives contradicting each other and not aligning is part of the fun. Excellent writing. Entrancing plot line. Not very likeable characters, which is another part of the fun.