![]() ![]() ![]() One of Melchor’s strengths as a writer is that she is keenly aware that no incident, however horrific, exists in a vacuum. ![]() The ferocity of the novel – and, be warned, it is a queasy read – may invite accusations of gratuitousness, but everything in it is channelled so impeccably through the minds of these two young men that the climax feels less like cartoonish horror than the logical endpoint of Polo and Franco’s very different but equally hopeless upbringings. But where in that novel the density of the writing occasionally became stifling, here it is finely tuned. ![]() Those who have read Hurricane Season will be familiar with Melchor’s style, her breathless sentences that unspool in long, nightmarish reams of sub-clauses. The narrative forms a simple arc, with the hatching of a plan involving Señora Marián and her family, and then its catastrophic execution, spearheaded by Franco and joined by a hesitant but opportunistic Polo.Īt just over 100 pages, Paradais has the intensity of a short story, and it might seem like the escalation of events is too extreme to be truly believable.But Melchor’s prose, in Sophie Hughes’s virtuosic translation, is so potent that the story’s pace never feels outlandish. Although the term is never used in the book, Franco is a textbook incel one who has become obsessed with his neighbour, Señora Marián, about whom he has sickening sexual fantasies that he freely relays to Polo. ![]()
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