While her writing turns an unsparing eye on the dysfunction and violence of her native Veracruz, Melchor makes clear that it is neither her job nor her intention to explain her homeland. Her novels are less portraits of Mexico than they are literary MRIs, probing unseen corners of the human heart and finding that many of its darker shades are universal.
— Benjamin P. Russell, The New York Times
A searing collection of true stories from “one of Mexico’s most exciting new voices” (The Guardian)
Set in and around the Mexican city of Veracruz, This Is Not Miami delivers a series of devastating stories—spiraling from real events—that bleed together reportage and the author’s rich and rigorous imagination.
These narrative nonfiction pieces probe deeply into the motivations of murderers and misfits, into their desires and circumstances, forcing us to understand them—and even empathize—despite our wish to simply label them monsters. As in her hugely acclaimed novels Hurricane Season and Paradais, Fernanda Melchor’s masterful stories show how the violent and shocking aberrations that make the headlines are only the surface ruptures of a society on the brink of chaos.
While her writing turns an unsparing eye on the dysfunction and violence of her native Veracruz, Melchor makes clear that it is neither her job nor her intention to explain her homeland. Her novels are less portraits of Mexico than they are literary MRIs, probing unseen corners of the human heart and finding that many of its darker shades are universal.
— Benjamin P. Russell, The New York Times
Some of the most wrenching prose to come around in years. Skillfully translated by Hughes, this is a book that’s as gorgeous as it is dark, and it proves that Melchor is one of the finest writers working today.
— Kirkus Reviews
Melchor draws empathetic portraits of deeply unsympathetic figures, forcing her readers to understand the mindsets of monstrous characters.
— The Millions
Fernanda Melchor has a powerful voice, and by powerful I mean unsparing, devastating, the voice of someone who writes with rage and has the skill to pull it off.
— Samanta Schweblin
Melchor evokes the stories of Flannery O’Connor, or, more recently, Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings. Impressive.
— Julian Lucas, The New York Times
Melchor aims to understand the world out of which violence transpires: the airlessness of poverty, the frustrations of thwarted ambition, the desire for power and freedom. … [She] writes a new kind of folklore that allows us to hear the ferocious reality of contemporary violence.
— Jess Cotton, Jacobin
In addition to bravely presenting dark truths, Melchor writes from a good heart.
— William T. Vollmann, The New York Times
Melchor’s pushing the reader to reassess the premises around which we make judgments about people, countries or entire regions.
— Mark Athitakis, The Los Angeles Times
Set in and around Veracruz, Fernanda Melchor’s hometown, each [story] is spare and grippingly devastating in its own way.
— Emily Donaldson, The Globe and Mail
Over the course of This Is Not Miami, a picture emerges of the Zetas’ takeover of Veracruz. Melchor moves through this world, compelled by macabre and mysterious stories, while always standing a little outside of them. This wider perspective implies that the current violence, the shadowy machinations in high places, will pass or change.
— Philip Luke Johnson, Los Angeles Review of Books
