This is not a book to pick up idly now and then, nor is it a book to read to make you feel good about yourself. Melchor's prose, endless sentences dragging you down into a maelstrom of violence both psychological and physical, deserves your full undivided attention for at least an hour at a time, and it won't reward you with any big catharsis. Not unlike, for instance, Jennifer Clement or Roberto Bolaño, her view of the roads Mexican society follows into the big cities is strewn with worn-out, broken and dead bodies, especially of women, of a stew of misogyny, racism and homophobia where people are willing to do anything to not be the one at the bottom. What sets her apart is that fantastic, reeling, Saramago-cum-Krasznahorkai prose that tumbles headfirst through time and place, taking us through a supposedly simple murder plot by circling through one narrator after the other, closer and closer to the actual act, dragging so much more into it, giving a full view of everyone's life no matter when it ends.