A formally impressive work, Melchor's novel manages to craft a disarmingly honest cluster of narrators around a grim event, and they are always interesting, and always revealing themselves whether directly or by another character. This is a novel that gets everything right as far as the mechanics of what makes for great storytelling but there is another aspect of this project that leaves very little room for discussion of all that. The only thing one is left with, in fact, after setting the novel down. Melchor has staged an inquiry into the ugliest paroxysms of male behavior. This book is profoundly unpleasant to read. I believe for the project Melchor set out to investigate it is necessarily unpleasant but there were several moments I lifted my head up after a particularly gruesome sentence, which by the way could be like 10 pages in this novel, and I thought What the hell am I reading this for?

There is an answer to that question. This is not a novel merely interested in shocking it's readers. The violence and hate and deeply grotesque acts being described add to a sophisticated point being told in a sophisticated way. It just so happens that this point, about the utter toxicity which fills the vacuum of male power denuded under late capitalism - the searching, the integration into fable and rumor, the desperation, the fatalism - it's uncomfortable to read, probably because the violence is real. Compressed into a single story of a novel, sure, but not so much exaggerated as it is focused on. As though Melchor were saying, this is disturbing: look at it.

I can't recommend this novel to everyone because some readers will not be able to get past the horrific content but I do think that's on them and not the novel, which is a triumph of craftsmanship and brave enough to stare into the dark heart of our human condition.