"Adolescent boys are monsters. Aggressively, Polo and "Fatboy" Franco, propelled by teenage rage, upend a gated community in a story fueled by alcohol, lust, and a breakneck stream-of-consciousness narrative from one of the greatest contemporary writers in fiction."
Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication Date 2022-05-10
Section New Hardcover - Fiction
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780811231329
Author of the acclaimed novel Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor leads us into a different kind of hell: paradise
Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor—an attractive married woman and mother—while Polo dreams about quitting his grueling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme.
Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society—with its racist, classist, hyperviolent tendencies—and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.
