Blaming people for their misery still seems to be a major part of his job description. He dedicates a special mass toĪll the wicked folk in town, to all those who, having chosen witchcraft over God, had succumbed to darkness, to dark forces, to the legions of daemons and ghosts who roamed the earth malign spirits that swarmed around looking for people to let them in: with impious thoughts, with the black magic rituals and superstitious beliefs which, to the town’s shame, abounded in that place, all because of the African roots of those who lived there, the idolatrous customs of the Indians and because of all the poverty, destitution and ignorance.Įven Father Casto can’t ignore the effect of social degradation, though it’s way down his list. In the eyes of the Church, or at least of Father Casto, original sin is not disobedience to God but is congenitally and racially determined. The institutions of church and state continue to fulfil their function, even if that function is almost purely oppressive. The emotional landscape of the book, its mutually reinforcing cruelty and neglect, isn’t a long way from Buñuel’s Mexican-set film Los Olvidados (1950), and aims for a similar response of bleak pity. We’re told the event took place in 1978, but for the impoverished Mexicans whose lives Melchor describes the erosion is slow and uninterrupted, and has a timeless and existential quality. Early in the novel reference is made to a particularly apocalyptic hurricane that results in a disastrous landslide and an avalanche of mud. T he title of Fernanda Melchor’s unrelenting novel brings together disruption and regularity, a break in the pattern but also the pattern that underlies the break.

Hurricane season novel review