Review by Booklist Review
Melchor suffuses the realities of life in a small Mexican village with dark, mythic undertones in her exhilarating and propulsive English-language debut. In La Matosa, the jobs are scarce and what little economy exists comes primarily from sex and drugs and providing both to workers of the surrounding cane and oil fields. Poverty, exploitation, and violence, however, are in unabated abundance. Folkloric themes swirl around the character of The Witch, whose violent death is told through multiple perspectives in novella-length sections, each consisting of a single paragraph ranging in length from one to 64 pages relayed by narrators of varying reliability. The virtuosic display of hyper-literary prose is a whirlwind of curses, dark humor, mythology, profanity, and folk wisdom that gathers speed in an unrelenting barrage of brilliance and leaves the reader breathless and marveling at the accomplishment. The depictions of violence, particularly those perpetrated upon women and gay and trans characters are graphic but not gratuitous and in Melchor's assured voice, often feel like reportage rather than fiction. Notably, The Witch's perspective is not shared, suggesting the marginalization of vulnerable populations and that silence is itself a form of violence. This bravura work blends reality with horror, myth with truth, and while the writing is magical, it is the realism that punctures the heart. Echoing the book's epigraph from Yeats, this is a work "of terrible beauty."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Melchor's English-language debut is a furious vortex of voices that swirl around a murder in a provincial Mexican town. The story opens with a group of boys discovering the body of the Witch in a canal. The Witch is a local legend: she provides the women of the town with cures and spells, while for the men she hosts wild, orgiastic parties at her house. Each chapter is a single, cascading paragraph and follows a different townsperson. First is Yesenia, a young woman who despises her addict cousin, Luismi, and one day sees him carrying the Witch from her home with another boy, Brando. Next is Munra, Luismi's stepfather, who was also present at the Witch's house; then Norma, a girl who flees her abusive stepfather and ends up briefly settling with Luismi; and lastly Brando, who finally reveals the details of the Witch's death. The murder mystery (complete with a mythical locked room in the Witch's house) is simply a springboard for Melchor to burrow into her characters' heads: their resentments, secrets, and hidden and not-so-hidden desires. Forceful, frenzied, violent, and uncompromising, Melchor's depiction of a town ogling its own destruction is a powder keg that ignites on the first page and sustains its intense, explosive heat until its final sentence. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A dead Witch in a Mexican village prompts a host of locals to share rumors and memories of her checkered life and violent death.Mexican writer Melchor's first book published in English is remarkable for the sheer force of its language. Its eight chapters are each one paragraph long, and they're usually very long paragraphs, often constructed of page- or pages-long sentences. The format gives the impression that we're occupying the space of a host of characters who'll brook no interruption, even if their storytelling is lurid, digressive, and/or unreliable. But all agree that a bad thing has happened: The corpse of a local Witch who trades in "curses and cures" has been discovered floating in an irrigation canal, "seething under a myriad of black snakes." The chapters that follow attempt to fill out the backstory: She allegedly killed her husband and cursed his sons, hexed relationships over money, might actually be a man, delivered abortions, and provided a druggy and boozy safe haven for young gay men. What's true or not matters less than the Witch's role as the village scapegoat, the person upon whom everyone places their shames and secrets. Two virtuoso chapters underscore the depth of feeling and disquieting intensity Melchor is capable of, one turning on a girl impregnated by her stepfather and the blame and embarrassment rained upon her, the other about a closeted young man in a Bosch-ian milieu that takes byways into drugs, violence, and bestiality porn. It's tough stuff but not gratuitously so: The narrative moves so fast the slurs and gross-outs feel less like attempts to shock and more like the infrastructure of a place built on rage and transgression. The place is suffused with "bad vibes, jinxes...bleakness." Whether the Witch was its creator or firewall is an open question.Messy yet engrossingly feverish. Melchor has deep reserves of talent and nerve. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
