RaveThe Harvard ReviewThose familiar with Hurricane Season will recognize Melchor’s voice and style (or rather, Hughes’s rendering of them) at once: rich and winding sentences woven through breathless page-long paragraphs; filthy, slang-ridden spoken language; a cinematic gaze that doesn’t shy away from extreme violence, rape, disenfranchisement, or social inequality; haunted houses and men who fear the women who live inside them (as they ultimately fear most women) ... While the novel can be read in one sitting, it is not easy to take it all in at once, to stare (sexual) violence directly, intensely, helplessly in the face ... We aren’t allowed to look away from the horror he sees. It’s a bold narrative move, and Melchor goes there, unafraid to analyze misogyny at its source and pull the reader with her—to look through the lens of, rather than at, toxic masculinity ... Melchor makes evident how violence and misogyny touch all corners of society, even the communities thought to be protected by physical gates, security guards, and money. Of course, it happens even in Paradise.
