Growing Up in the World Made by Femicide

Two teenagers almost get into a fight in a Walmart. This would be an unremarkable moment of suburban malaise, but Franco and Polo are bickering over which type of tape to use when they tie up and gag Franco’s neighbors, the Maroño family. Their quarrel is only resolved when an employee helps Polo find the duct tape. She casually quips, “Oh … you’re looking for kidnapper tape.”

Fernanda Melchor’s new novel, Paradais, is a kind of buddy story. Indeed, the author herself has referred to the novel’s protagonists as “tropical Beavis and Butt-head.”1 But in this story, the two buddies—Leopoldo “Polo” García Chaparro and Franco Andrade—don’t particularly like each other...