Nov 19, 2025
Have you read Paradais by Fernanda Melchor (orig. Páradais, 2021)?
yes
no
I didn't finish it
I've never heard of it
Voting ended onNov 26, 2025
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Have you read Paradais by Fernanda Melchor (orig. Páradais, 2021)?
yes
no
I didn't finish it
I've never heard of it
Title: Paradais | Author: Fernanda Melchor | Publisher: New Directions (2022)
i still do get hit with a wave of "oh my fucking god if i could only help polo leave his life and situation and get a better one" after finishing paradais
paradais by fernanda melchor was really good! it was not as harrowing as i was expecting, somehow. Really quick read that felt stream of consciousness/dreamlike in some aspects, i can see why i've seen this book brought up in conjunction with conversations between both toni morrison and clarice lispector.
there's so much intent and craft as to what melchor reveals when, like the absolute battle i had trying to figure out polo's age only to have it finally revealed in the final few pages just. oh my god.
also, i gave melchor a shot because she is mexican and i know she used to be a journalist. i do not trust a lot of english narratives about the cartels, like, at all, and i figured i could, and glad i did, trust melchor.
books i read in 2025 - 9 - paradais / fernanda melchor
this is the second fernanda melchor novel i’ve read, the first being hurricane season, which i really enjoyed. melchor has a gritty, dark, biting tone; she doesn’t hold back from the nasty, the mean, or the morally black. in paradais, we have polo, a young man who hates his job at the paradais gated community, hates his mother for making him get it and pocketing every cent he makes, hates his pregnant cousin who took his bed and teases him, and most of all hates going home to face them. instead, he spends his evenings getting drunk at the docks with fat boy, a white boy living in the community where he works. as he drinks fat boy’s alcohol, he listens to fat boy describe in detail what he would do to his beautiful rich neighbor if he ever got his hands on her. this is a story of masculine violence compounding, and the way it explodes. 7/10
just read 'paradais' by fernanda melchor and idk if i want to give it a 1 star or 5 stars. one of those books that makes you want to go WTF DID I JUST READ OH MY GOD I HATE THIS BUT OH MY GODDD