Hurricane Season

By: Fernanda Melchor, Sophie Hughes - translator

Narrated by: Inés del Castillo, Tim Pabon, Ana Osorio

Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's Summary

The English-language debut of one of the most thrilling and accomplished young Mexican writers

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Winner of the Internationaler Literaturpreis

The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse - by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals - propels the whole village into an investigation of how and why this murder occurred. Rumors and suspicions spread. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters that most would write off as utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village. 

Like Roberto Bolano’s 2666 or Faulkner’s greatest novels, Hurricane Season takes place in a world filled with mythology and violence - real violence, the kind that seeps into the soil, poisoning everything around: it’s a world that becomes more terrifying and more terrifyingly real the deeper you explore it.

©2016 Fernanda Melchor; English translation copyright 2020 Sophie Hughes (P)2020 Audible, Inc.

Wow

One of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read and I loved it, haha. It goes without saying that this story took a toll on my soul; with all the foul language, murder, rape, and just plan awfulness of the characters in the entire story. I was hook threw every chapter though. The narrator’s where fantastic and the author is one to look out for in more books she will write. I give this book the rating I gave it because it’s just raw, brutal, and an all around good read.

Difficult to Rate

The Spanish names (characters) and Spanish words mixed into the story made the story difficult for me to follow. There was a witch, a murder and a lot of swears, sex and violence- that’s about all I am taking away from this book. However, the narration, and stream of concise style writing was enjoyable. The vulgarity was not an issue for me but it is excessive.

Powerful and devastating narrative

This amazing novel is not for the faint of heart. Reading it is like pushing on a bruise. It hurts to keep reading, but you feel compelled to nonetheless. The Audible version is excellent...bringing the narratives to life in an unforgettable way.

Excellent Story, Iffy Performances

Hard to listen to due to the often brutal content but still a brilliant story.
It can be distracting when spanish passages are read in broken or mangled spanish.
I'm unsure how difficult it is to find real spanish speaking performers but it must be tough.

Trigger warning?

How could something so nauseatingly violent and dark be beautiful? Master story weaving and character conjuring. Descriptions to seer and singe all your senses. A massive TRIGGER WARNING on this book though. People who suffer from PTSD or severe anxiety should beware.

Very awkward pacing

Each of the readers suffered the same disastrous pacing direction. Pauses were very awkward, it was jarring to listen to. It felt like they were being feed the script in paragraphs and stopped at the end of each line, rather than at the end of sentences.

It captured me until it was porn

This went downhill as it became mostly perverse. I wanted more story and less lengthy pornographic descriptions of sex with the devil, child molestation, and latent homosexual fantasies. Really could have been 4-5 stars if that was kept to a tactful mention as it pertained to character development.

The most miserable misery porn to ever misery.

"It's a violent pornography
Choking chicks and sodomy
The kind of shit you get on your TV"

This is just a bunch of short stories of miserable and usually terrible people living awful abusive lives because everyone around them is a terrible person. It's like if Haruki Murakami tried to be Joe Abercrombie but without any of the dark humor to balance out the terrible stuff.

The story barely exists. It's only there as a loose thread to tie the collection of miserable characters together. 90% of the book is just the backgrounds of these people and why their lives suck so much. The last 10% is the brief glimpse they had of the overarching plot while suffering through the sadistic shit the author put them through.

I don't feel like this book said anything profound. The nonlinear storytelling was neat, but the story it told was nothing special. A woman that everyone hated was murdered by a man everyone hated because she helped his girlfriend get an abortion. There's no extra political or sociological commentary on that. It really is all about the individual character stories, and while some of them are sympathetic at times, it eventually gets ridiculous how every single character involved in this story is either pure evil themselves or comes from a background of nothing but pure evil people.

Great book!

A close look at our most vulnerable humanity: longing for love, acceptance, and strength. All this existing in an environment crude enough to make it shine.

Disgusting

I have never read a more disturbing work of fiction. Crime against literature !

Too vulgar for me

I chose this book due to being described as a murder mystery, but the culprits are revealed so early on theres no mystery left. I was forcing myself through it and felt sick at times by how vulgar and disturbing it was in its details. I didnt find any benefit at all to that level of disgusting information.

Extremely funny (in places) book

I had no idea what this book was about but having read the one star review it got, I realised it might be for me. I wasn't disappointed, made me belly laugh throughout.
It's tough to take in places, but overall it's a fabulous story and one of the most hilarious books I've ever read. Can't wait for the next one!

f*****g love it

I love how the author pulls us in, makes us care for the characters and then slaps us in the face. she's got a gift.