The Nature of Things

Oh, my, this was hard to read! It is an unrelenting verbal torrent of barbarity, trauma, and unrelieved evil written by its author in the grip of what feels like white-hot ferocity. Melchor is an acclaimed Mexican writer and this is her first book that has been translated into English, which is how I read it. My grasp of Spanish was not up to the task. Melchor's theme is the misogyny which seems endemic in Mexican society and the unthinkable violence against women that flows from it. The women characters in her novel are routinely abused, beaten, raped, and murdered and it seems that there is little consequence to the perpetrators. Thus, the understandable source of the writer's white-hot ferocity. She tells us a story of the Witch; that's how she is known to locals. She is actually the Young Witch. Her mother, the Old Witch, is dead, but before she died, rumor had it that she had seduced and killed an old gentleman and his riches all came to her and are now hidden somewher...