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Melchor's language goes back to the primal, carnal desires, stripping it of any romanticism, any pleasant images that brush off against one's cheek to induce a feeling of tranquility. "Sleeping on a bed of needles", that is how I would describe every page I flipped, yet I cannot regret a single line in which the gore images were depicted with such intensity. A novel of its time, placing the Mexican socio-economic context right in the center without clearly stating in bold activist claims what it is fighting against. Someone is kidnapped and tortured? Anti-cartel, though never stated. Her bold descriptions play well against the mundane lives of the two main characters - two young boys - who face existential questions that they postpone answering. Maybe in the end we are all repeating our parents mistakes? Melchor would fight against this, given its reductionist geneticist approach, instead telling us to look around us and what prompted us to do what we did. Simply stating someone is a killer, without knowing what made him take that gun is pointless and creates more problems than solving some.

Now, I need a break. Probably will head towards some Hemingway to learn about bullfighting, because Melchor made every muscle in my body twitch. It is a disturbing novel, though necessary to read in this day and age.

Walking through the streets of Athens one may get the false impression that since antiquity, since the old days of democracy, Greece has been a developed nation. Upon reading the book which I found in a lovely bookstore, just by Kolonaki, one of the major ones that hold English books, I discovered a different Greece, outside of the romanticized narratives. The book takes the dictatorship of Metaxas (1936 - 40), oftentimes regarded as fascist - a statement with which I agree - but which in both theory and practice differ much from Mussolini, Antonescu or Hitler. Metaxas had no cult following, had no blue/black/brown shirts following him with the few exception of the youth league.

The book is a collection of essays both on the left and the right with some being more sympathetic towards Metaxas, but rather from a pragmatic statehood point of view, while others are deeply critical of any days of his dictatorship.

Not for the faintly hearted, not for those who aim to get the easy message out or a delicious storyline. A restaurant, a bar, a place to eat, a couple of towns, jobs, Prohibition and reflection upon the craft of writing. The 3/5 review does not indicate the quality of the book which I think is of the highest esteems, but rather represents a disappointment, an indication on my side. To understand Torrents of Spring, I must go back in time, read Anderson and question the "discussing arts in Paris side".

One gets the most out of this by reading the comments he lays masterfully between the pages, commenting on Fitzgerald interrupting his writing session and spending a little too much time by the fireplace. Attention to the "little too much time". The book is a window in its time period, not romanticizing the artistic movement of the modernist, but rather questioning their farts and presumed "intellectual behavior". To gossip, to be in a cafe, to spend time pondering. Hemingway wanted to write, and why did they disturb him?

Nevertheless, it was a great read after Men without Women.