Paradais
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasises about seducing his neighbour—an attractive married woman and mother—while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener in the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Facing the impossibility of getting what they think they deserve, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme.
Melchor is a thrilling writer, her electric prose charged with the power to transform the reader. Paradais explores the explosive nature of Mexico’s brittle society, fractured by issues of race, class and violence—and confronts us with teenagers whose desires and hardships can tear life apart.
Fernanda Melchor was born in 1982 in Veracruz, Mexico. She is widely recognised as ‘one of Mexico’s most exciting new voices’ (Guardian). She won the Anna-Seghers-Preis and the International Literature Award for Hurricane Season, which has also been longlisted for the National Book Award, and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. She lives in Mexico.
Sophie Hughes has translated works by Laia Jufresa and Enrique Vila-Matas, among others. Her translation of Alia Trabucco Zerán's The Remainder was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, and her translation of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.
‘Fernanda Melchor explores violence and inequity in this brutal novel. She does it with dazzling technical prowess, a perfect pitch for orality, and a neurosurgeon’s precision for cruelty. Paradais is a short inexorable descent into Hell.’ Mariana Enríquez
‘The ‘elemental cry’ of Ms. Melchor’s writing voice, a composite of anger and anguish, is entirely her own.’ Wall Street Journal
‘Melchor evokes the stories of Flannery O’Connor, or Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings. Impressive.’ New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The intense latest from Mexican writer Melchor (Hurricane Season) follows two teenage boys in the Yucatán united by their disparate longings. The story is mostly that of Polo, who is angry and directionless after failing out of high school and spurned by his criminal older cousin and "almost a brother" Milton after attempting to get work with him. Instead, he serves as gardener in a gated community, where he meets Franco Andrade, a pampered but troubled overweight delinquent occasionally beaten by his father. In the boys' time together, drinking excessive amounts of booze paid for by Franco and secured by Polo, Franco spouts expansively about his lust for new neighbor Señora Marián. Polo is amused by Franco's delusional obsession—which Melchor renders unflinchingly in a pungent anthem of masturbatory fantasies—and disgusted by the Señora, whom he sees as attention-seeking for her lycra pants and cleavage. He's still a boy—he's terrified by the local legend of the Bloody Countess, the ghost of a Spanish colonist who was beaten to death—but wants to be a man and to gain acceptance from Milton, as Franco grows increasingly desperate for the Señora. Their plan, hinted at throughout and revealed only at the end, comes off as wildly absurd and sadly plausible. Once again, this writer impresses and disturbs.
Customer Reviews
Not for the faint hearted
3.5 stars
Author
Mexican journalist and fiction writer. Her novel ‘Hurricane Season’ won the 2019 Anna Seghers Prize, a German award for young and emerging authors, and was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize. This one is long listed for the 2022 International Booker, but missed the shortlist.
Precis
Two teenage boys hang out and get drunk in the titular luxury housing complex. One is fat and lonely and lives there with his grandparents. The other is a gardener and lives in nearby village. The fat kid fantasises about his neighbour, the wife of a TV celebrity, and thinks about ways to seduce her. The other guy thinks about escaping his poor village, his nagging mother, and his pregnant cousin who lives with them. The boys come up with a scheme. No prizes for guessing it’s not a good scheme. How bad, you ask? Brutal, violent, foul mouthed, and relentless come to mind.
Prose
The first 30 pages set things up and are relatively straightforward. After that, long sentences of unrelenting…I’m not sure what the right word is but was reminded on occasion of the ‘Saw’ movies...pour out on the page. Ms Melchor can certainly write. Whether you’d want to read it is another matter.
Bottom line
Not for the faint hearted.