Hurricane Season

by Fernanda Melchor

Translated by Sophie Hughes

Published in 2020 by New Directions

The witch is dead, murdered, left to rot in a drainage ditch. Who killed her and why? These questions initially drive the narrative, though it’s not long before we learn the answers. Yet, the question of why lingers and becomes the nucleus of what follows.

The book is structured around several characters, changing perspectives as things develop. From these characters we learn that the witch is actually a man who may have AIDS (“And even though he had something, a sort of veil, covering his face, you only had to hear his voice and see his hands to know that he was a homosexual, and Munra told Chabela that he’d changed his mind, he didn’t want his spirit cleansing anymore, because the very thought of that homo’s hands on him creeped him out…(83)). It’s also clear that the witch is a scapegoat for the town/people; she serves as a reflection of the people around her: “Stupid Witch, Chabela went on, she’s going soft in the head; what a scene, as if I didn’t know everything there was to know about these things, for fuck’s sake, when I was the first one to realize you had a bun in the oven, wasn’t I?” (96)  Yet, she (the witch) is also practical, a country doctor of sorts fixing the body (e.g., providing abortions) and spirit. 

By shifting perspectives among a few people who live in or near Villa, we are given windows into people’s existence, their thoughts, their realities in a harsh, ruthless place, like so many places, like the experiences of so many people that are never told. We see how people thrust their hopes and meanness on her and demand results in return, growing angry when they don’t get them and are left to question what to do when the witch is gone, when there’s no one to look at or blame but themselves. 

There’s murder, homophobia, rape, incest, extreme violence, uncouth language, and abuse of all kinds because the point is to be uncomfortable. The witch is a product of rape and trauma, an outcast navigating the brutishness (both of people and nature) of the world around her. Cycles of abuse are repeated as people succumb to the paranoia brought on by the murder, which redoubles the terribleness of life, heightens everything into reflection and then action. This is a book that forces these things, in extreme, front and center, making the reader look at them and consider the institutional, linguistic, and personal systems/thoughts that allow such evils to exist and fester. It feels necessary and heinous in a way that a lot of writing doesn’t, but it also feels partly juvenile, presented more as news than as something vital. 

I have no problem with this kind of depravity being the centerpiece of a work (Maldoror is one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing), but I have some issues with the book. Mostly, all of the characters have the same voice, and it’s one that is extremely one-note and flat. Everything drills on about how terrible life and these traumatic events are so much that the ideas and their effects take over the characters’ humanity. In this way, the system of delivery (including the choices of language) becomes the message, and this is kind of a neat trick, though I question how intentional it is. I couldn’t shake the feeling of reading a teenage boy’s journal meant to shock and intimidate.  I don’t know how to square this one up for a rating (I was equally repulsed and intrigued, bored/annoyed but interested to see what else would develop). Ultimately, I think it’s worth a read for those intrigued by this write up. To all others, I’d say, let’s see what else Melchor has to offer. 

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