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Fury
Fury: A Novel | Clyo Mendoza
1 post | 3 to read
In this debut novel, Clyo Mendoza, a young, award-winning Mexican poet and novelist, weaves together multiple narratives into a lyrical, shape-shifting existential reflection on love, violence, and the power of myth. “Fury has the poetic and wild force of the desert. In its pages there is tenderness, fear and forceful, rhythmic writing with images that are difficult to forget. It is about the violence of desire that turns us into dogs that drool, howl and bite, but also about love in the midst of hostility and helplessness. This is why it is a disturbing and, at the same time, deeply moving novel.” —Mónica Ojeda "A beguiling and enticing fever dream of sex and violence in the Mexican desert. . . . This is impossible to put down." —Publishers Weekly, starred review In a desert dotted with war-torn towns, Lázaro and Juan are two soldiers from opposing camps who abandon the war and, while fleeing, become lovers and discover a dark truth. Vicente Barrera, a salesman who swept into the lives of women who both hated and revered him, spends his last days tied up like a mad dog. A morgue worker, Salvador, gets lost in the desert and hallucinating from heat and thirst, mistakes the cactus for the person he loves. Over the echoes of the stories of these broken men—and of their mothers, lovers and companions—Mendoza explores her characters’ passions in a way that simmers on the page, and then explodes with pain, fear and desire in a landscape that imprisons them. After winning the International Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Poetry Prize, Clyo Mendoza has written a novel of extraordinary beauty where language embarks on a hallucinatory trip through eroticism, the transitions of conscience, and the possibility of multiple beings inhabiting a single body. In this journey through madness, incest, sexual abuse, infidelity, and silence, Fury offers a moving questioning of the complexity of love and suffering. The desert is where these characters' destinies become intertwined, where their wounds are inherited and bled dry. Readers will be blown away by the sensitivity of the writing, and will shudder at the way violence conveyed with a poetic forcefulness and a fierce mastery of the Mexican oral tradition. "An amazing, hypnotic and beautiful novel, like contemplating the desert." —Juan Pablo Villalobos
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vivastory
Fury: A Novel | Clyo Mendoza
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This was a find while browsing at the library. What intrigued me were the number of blurbs by writers I respect (esp Catherine Lacey & Laird Hunt) but I was sold on the comp to Pedro Paramo. As to the latter, there are def elements in it that I think earn the comparison, despite the fact that Rulfo's novel is so sui generis that it's pretty difficult to get a direct comparison. This is a dark, compelling, hallucinatory novel. (CONT)

vivastory Not to detract from what Mendoza is doing, but I thought of both Schweblin & Fernanda Melchor while reading it. A great read, with some unsettling content, that almost demands revisiting to pick apart the narrative intricacies. (edited) 2w
Liz_M Excellent review, onto the wishlist it goes! 2w
vivastory @Liz_M Thanks! After I finished I was compelled to browse through the 7 stories site. Def. found some books I'm looking forward to. 2w
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