Paradais by Fernanda Melchor

It was all fatboy’s fault, that’s what he would tell them. It was all because of Franco Andrade and his obsession with Senora Marian. Polo just did what he was told, followed orders. Fatboy was completely crazy abotu her, and Polo had seen first-hand how for weeks the kid had talked about nothing but screwing her, making her his, whatever it took; the same shit over and over like a broken record, his eyes vacant and bloodshot from the alcohol and his fingers sticky with cheesy powder, which the fat pig only ever licked clean once he’d scoffed the whole jumbo bag of crisps…

The conclusion of Paradais by Fernanda Melchor is clear from the very first page. Two teenage boys want something, from the big mansion next door. Polo, a school dropout working as a gardener in a gated community wants money and infamy, and Franco - a lonely, overweight, porn-addicted rich kid wants Senora Marian. Over evenings of drinking themselves stupid, the boys become more frustrated with not having what they feel entitled to and hatch a terrible, violent plan.

This is the second book by Melchor translated into English by Sophie Hughes. The first, Hurricane Season, was a brutal exploration of violence against women, revisiting the murder of a local witch from multiple perspectives. Melchor painted the hopelessness of poverty, of social standing, and of male violence in black and red. While I found Hurricane Season incredibly empathetic and vivid, it was undeniably horrific in its refusal to shy away from the ugly truth of violence. I was taken by Melchor’s ability to evoke empathy for characters who were barely deserving of any.

Paradais stylistically follows a similar imprint to Hurricane Season, sentences are hurried, urgent and seem liable to overflow from the slight 120 pages. Some paragraphs go on for pages at a time, sentences bleeding into each other; an onrush of violence, misogyny, hatred, sadness, anxiety and shame coming at the reader full pelt with very little downtime.

Polo is the main protagonist of the story, Melchor is at pains to portray him as sympathetic, to an extent. The working-class men of Paradais seemingly have two employment opportunities: either the soul-crushing underpaid jobs that humiliate them as much as they benefit their rich bosses, or working for the narcos and all of the violence and trauma that comes with it. Polo sleeps on the floor of his house, using a dirty t-shirt for a pillow while his older, pregnant cousin sleeps in his bed. Polo is in awe of the narcos and dreams of becoming a gangster like his other cousin, Milton (who himself was kidnapped and forced into terrible acts after seeing his friends killed). It wasn’t lost on me that the complex Paradise shares the name of John Milton’s most famous offering, Paradise Lost, which focused on themes of free will and transgression.

One way Paradais differs from Hurricane Season is in the scale of the story. The locations and characters inhabit a smaller world, and from the start Melchor makes the terrible end destination of sexual violence clear. It feels much more like a close character study of Polo and to an extent Franco as well; their aimless, nihilistic little lives, both choosing extreme violence as a means of escape from the drudgery of existence. The final scenes of Paradais are both explicitly rendered as well as terrifyingly real and human. Reality that had sat with the reader for the entirety of Paradais seems to finally hit the two boys in the final act. What was meant to be a carefully planned act of evil transgression turns into a chaotic, alcohol-fueled home invasion, murders rendered even more horrific and terrible by their meaninglessness.

For all its vivid violence and sexualised language Melchor manages to beautifully compartmentalise the narrative. We understand that we’re following Polo’s troubled thinking and mindset, and in doing so we’re afforded a chance to empathise with the unempathisable. I’ve read several reviews about Melchor’s work and how it orbits the world of violence against women, but I think it almost does the opposite in that it really orbits the world of violence committed by men. I understand that despite Sophie Hughes’ expert translations, some of the complexity of language has been lost in translation from Spanish, as Melchor is known for using wordplay with Mexican dialect and vernacular.

I find it a hard book to recommend to a general audience because there is a great deal of triggering language and imagery burned into every page. But I think there are some really important insights about gender-based violence and perceptions of modern Mexican society for those who are prepared for a challenging read.