PositiveReview 31[Melchor] develops a convincing case that we should all be thinking a lot more about what happens under the squirming, sweaty skins of teenage boys ... a torrent of piss and shit and blood and semen, but for all its visceral realism it also possesses a mythic quality.
Fernanda Melchor, Trans. by Sophie Hughes
Rave3AM MagazineThere is a breathlessness to these accounts, as if time is running out ... an important intervention—by focusing her attention on Veracruz, the initial site of conquistador colonialism, Melchor demonstrates that the everyday lives of people who are far away from the border, who are not narcos, and who are just trying to get by, or get high, or waste time while waiting for work, are still ‘dying in the heat’, at risk of destruction at every moment ... The relentless onslaught of clauses and conjunctions in Melchor’s sentences seem to mimic forward movement, but the reader is instead pushed deeper and deeper into the lives of characters for whom it appears death is the only way out of suffering and squalor. The chapters hurtle around and circle back to the same points, revealing grislier details previously omitted, and mostly end up with their protagonists at dead ends...Sometimes it is necessary to slow down or pause, and come up for air ... The brilliance of Melchor’s novel is that it continually overturns assumptions, doing so, sometimes, within the same sentence ... Much of the tragedy and considerable affective power of Melchor’s novel comes from its characters being forced to be adults too early, having to learn their lines as they are playing the roles in a drama that is all too real ... Against the context of a country where abortion is very much a pressing issue, and women are routinely prosecuted and convicted for having abortions, Melchor’s novel feels vital ... Chingar, Paz writes ‘stings, wounds, gashes, stains. And it provokes a bitter, resentful satisfaction.’ The same might be said about Melchor’s novel. It is gruelling and thrilling to be pummelled through its characters’ fast, fucked-up lives, but what emerges from the experience is a greater understanding of a complex country in crisis, as well as a whole world spiralling out of control ... acts as materialist critique of the kind of toxic masculinity that dominates the politics of our contemporary moment, demonstrating the ways in which social relations are reduced to, and simultaneously subvert, the dialectic of ‘fucker’ and ‘the fucked’.
