#paradais

Title: Paradais | Author: Fernanda Melchor | Publisher: New Directions (2022)

also, i gave melchor a shot because she is mexican and i know she used to be a journalist. i do not trust a lot of english narratives about the cartels, like, at all, and i figured i could, and glad i did, trust melchor.

this is the second fernanda melchor novel i’ve read, the first being hurricane season, which i really enjoyed. melchor has a gritty, dark, biting tone; she doesn’t hold back from the nasty, the mean, or the morally black. in paradais, we have polo, a young man who hates his job at the paradais gated community, hates his mother for making him get it and pocketing every cent he makes, hates his pregnant cousin who took his bed and teases him, and most of all hates going home to face them. instead, he spends his evenings getting drunk at the docks with fat boy, a white boy living in the community where he works. as he drinks fat boy’s alcohol, he listens to fat boy describe in detail what he would do to his beautiful rich neighbor if he ever got his hands on her. this is a story of masculine violence compounding, and the way it explodes. 7/10