#fernanda melchor

[date-prisa-estamos-leyendo]

Dicen que en realidad nunca murió, porque las brujas nunca mueren tan fácil. Dicen que en el último momento, antes de que los muchachos aquellos la apuñalaran, ella alcanzó a lanzar un conjuro para convertirse en otra cosa: en un lagarto o un conejo que corrió a refugiarse a lo más profundo del monte. O en el milano gigante que apareció en el cielo días después del asesinato: un animal enorme que volaba en círculos sobre los sembradíos y que luego se posaba sobre las ramas de los árboles a mirar con ojos colorados a la gente que pasaba debajo, como con ganas de abrir el pico y hablarles.

Temporada de huracanes, Fernanda Melchor.

[elmundoestahechodefrasesyletras]

Con el alcohol las cosas buenas se hacían mejores y las culeras como que se soportaban más fácilmente.

[mira-wooster]

[kikenhanna17world]

Cuando leí el libro hace cuatro años me impactó de una manera profunda, lo cerré pensando que el Juan Rulfo de mi generación era una vieja y se llamaba Fernanda Melchor. No había leído nada más genial en muchos años, me impresionó, me dejó sin aliento, estaba en esa idea del libro y recuerdo que iba en carretera con mi papá y se lo comencé a contar y terminé diciéndole: ‘Sería un peliculón’, en ese momento supe que debía adaptarla”, comentó la directora. Elisa Miller

Temporada de huracanes

[bookcoversonly]

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

[grandhotelabyss]

Thanks to your praise, I finally dove into 2666 (wow, wow, holy, HOLY shit!), and then into another celebrated novel in a similar register, Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. It's a fetid, base, Faulknerian nightmare of a read and, in my opinion, one of the few recent Booker nominations actually worthy of a win, not for the laurels it brings, but to get this writer tens of thousands into her pocket to free up more time for writing. (Of course, it couldn't make it past the longlist, while Xwitter's Very Own Brandon Taylor was shortlisted.*) If you haven't checked it out, this anon highly recommends it.

*Which is, perhaps, an unfair characterization; I haven't read his novels, but nothing from his online presence compels me to rush to the nearest bookstore.

Thank you! Yes, I own Hurricane Season, and it's high on the proverbial reading list. That's an example of a work so praised from so many different quarters and by so many different types of people that it's hard to believe hype alone could have generated its eminence. But I will have to read it for myself to know for sure. (Plus, the author, like Kirsten Dunst and me, was born in 1982—another example, if more were needed, of elder-Millennial excellence.)

Re: the Booker, I recognized exactly three names from the most recent long list: one because he's a previous Pulitzer winner, one because we were in grad school at the same place/time, and one because he's the IRL friend-of-a-friend, and the three of us met up once in bar a few years back (and discussed, as it happened, David Mitchell). I mention it only because the Booker used to be a much bigger deal than it is now—more evidence for the seemingly inexorable fragmentation of literary culture.

[ijustkindalikebooks]

Review: This Is Not Miami by Fernanda Melchor.

Set in and around the city of Veracruz in Mexico, This is Not Miami delivers a series of devastating stories - spiraling from real events - that bleed together reportage and the author's rich and rigorous imagination.

These cronicás – a genre unique to Latin American writing that blends reportage, narrative non-fiction, and novelistic forms – probe deeply into the motivations of murderers and misfits, into their desires and circumstances, forcing us to understand them – and even empathize – despite our wish to disdain them as monsters. As in her hugely acclaimed novels Hurricane Season and Paradais, and once again brilliantly translated by Sophie Hughes, Fernanda Mechor’s masterful stories show how the violent and shocking aberrations that make the headlines are only the surface ruptures of a society on the brink of chaos.

I always think that a short story collection can't be perfect - every story has to be as strong as the next and that is a difficult job, but this book certainly with it's blend of eeriness, melancholia and feeling does a really good job at trying to make this collection something to be remembered.

From the first story, this book tells almost the story of losing the rose-tinted glasses of youth to confusing small planes for UFO's and that jadedness that comes with realising the truth of what was happening makes for a sad but honest start to this book that sets the standard for the rest of the book throughout.

Every character glows from the page, from El Ojon, whose personality jumps out in 'The Vice Belt' to Jorge in 'The House on El Estero' has a narrative voice that just works so flawlessly throughout as they recount a story that happened many years ago and moves between that and the present and this voice is excellent no matter the story in this collection.

I really enjoyed these stories and would love to see more from this author, there's so much talent with words here.

(Thanks to Netgalley for the arc for review)

[stinkybreath]

[…] Waifs with no meat on their bones but caked in makeup, and who, for the price of a beer, would allow that evening’s partner to slip them a hand, full fingers even, as they danced; chubby girls who looked like they’d been smeared in lard under the worn-out ceiling fans and who, after six straight hours of fiesta, no longer knew what was more draining: spending an hour sucking the cock of the man who’d chosen them or pretending that they really were listening to what the boring cunt had to say; and then the veteran girls, who danced alone when nobody picked them out, there in the middle of the dirt dance floor, drunk on cumbia and beer, lost in that amnesiac tumpa tumpa; girls all washed up before their time, carried in from some far-flung dump on the same breeze that whipped up the plastic bags, leaving them wrapped around the sugar cane; women tired of life, women who, from one day to the next, would realize they no longer had it in them to reinvent themselves with every man they met, women who chuckled chipped-tooth chuckles to themselves when they recalled the dreams they’d once had […]

Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor

[craigfernandez]

[date-prisa-estamos-leyendo]

Mujeres cansadas de la vida, mujeres que de pronto se daban cuenta que ya no estaban para andarse reinventando con cada hombre que conocían.

Temporada de huracanes, Fernanda Melchor.

[nathanabhaltersmith-shelf]

[slicedblackolives]

fitzcarraldo editions are BEAUTIFUL by the way

[amigosdepapel]

Título: Aqui no es Miami

Autor: Fernanda Melchor

Editorial: Debols!llo

Otro libro sobre Veracruz. Narra la vida cotidiana del puerto en cuentos o relatos breves que pueden leerse independientemente uno de los otros. Se nota el efecto de la entrada del narco y la descomposición social que acarrea. Además esta escrita justo cuando el ex presidente Calderón emprendió su guerra contra el narco, generando las noticias que todos conocimos. No como la "pax morena" en la que AMLO hundió al pais.

¡En fin! La prosa de Fernanda Melchor está bien lograda y no se siente artificial ni impostada.

[justforbooks]

Αν ο Χάντερ Τόμσον εξέφρασε μια ολόκληρη εποχή γραφιάδων με ιστορίες από τις παρυφές του δημοσιογραφικού κόσμου και από όλα όσα ο επίσημος Τύπος βύθιζε στα σκοτεινά, η θαρραλέα Μελτσόρ έχει προωθήσει ακόμα περισσότερο τη μοναδική μείξη πραγματικού, ντοκιμαντερίστικου στοιχείου και μυθοπλασίας. Φτιάχνοντας υψηλή λογοτεχνία με ακραία ρεαλιστικά υλικά –άλλωστε, ποιος μπορεί να ξεχωρίσει τι είναι πραγματικό και τι αδιανόητο στο σύγχρονο Μεξικό;–, καταβυθίζεται στο υπογάστριο της κοινωνίας για να βγάλει από τα σπλάχνα του όλα όσα οι υπόλοιποι επιμένουν να ξορκίζουν.

Ναρκέμποροι και χρήστες, αποσυνάγωγοι και απλοί άνθρωποι που πιστεύουν σε εξορκισμούς και μάγια, ακόμα και μια βασίλισσα του καρναβαλιού όπως η Εβανχελίνα Τεχέρα που σκότωσε τα δυο της παιδιά και τα έθαψε σε γλάστρες, τίποτα δεν φαίνεται να ξεφεύγει από το εκτυφλωτικό φως της Μελτσόρ. Η συγγραφέας της Εποχής των Τυφώνων και του Παραντάις (επίσης κυκλοφορούν από το Δώμα) επιβεβαιώνει ότι δίκαια έχει προκριθεί ως η καταξιωμένη συγγραφέας της λίστας του Booker και μία από τις σημαντικότερες συγγραφείς στη Λατινική Αμερική, με τον Χουάν Γκαμπριέλ Βάσκεθ να την αποκαλεί στο «New Yorker» «τη σπουδαιότερη νέα συγγραφέα του Μεξικού».

Όπως επισημαίνει χαρακτηριστικά η Μεξικανή συγγραφέας στο κείμενο που συνοδεύει τις ιστορίες της, «δεν γράφω για δάκρυα, για οπλισμένους άνδρες ή τραυματισμένα παιδιά εκεί όπου δεν υπήρξαν. Η μόνη μυθοπλασία που είμαι διατεθειμένη να αναγνωρίσω σε αυτές τις αφηγήσεις είναι εκείνη που ενυπάρχει σε κάθε κατασκεύασμα της ανθρώπινης γλώσσας από το ποίημα μέχρι το δελτίο Τύπου: η φόρμα, η αφηγηματική δομή».

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[goldencrownofsorro]

#119

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Hurricane Season | Author: Fernanda Melchor | Publisher: Text Publishing (2020)