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February is the shortest month of the year and Jeselnik Book Club feels your pain. This month I've chosen Paradais by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes, for two reasons: it's only 112 pages and the ending will tear your stomach out through your mouth. Fernanda Melchor is a Mexican author, famous for her debut novel, Hurricane Season, which won a whole bunch of shit, but I liked Paradais even more. It is a tour de force. The novel builds dread straight through the climax and then does not stop building that dread until the last page. This is the kind of book you finish and then stare off into space for a while. It's a banger. They're all bangers at Jeselnik Book Club. Enjoy your reading and then email me: JeselnikBookClub@gmail.com with any questions or comments and I'll see you at the end of the month. 

Kicking off Jeselnik Book Club this January with The Getaway by Jim Thompson. Thompson was a prolific author, known as "the dime-store Dostoevsky" for bringing brilliant, but simple writing to the crime genre and I believe this is his best work. The Getaway has been made into a film twice: once with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw in 1972, and again with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger in 1994. Both films did not even attempt to tackle the insanely dark ending of the novel. This is the kind of book you finish and then immediately go back and reread the final chapter. The Getaway is a brisk 205 pages. I advise you to skip the forward to avoid spoilers. Please email me with any questions or comments at JeselnikBookClub@gmail.com once you have finished this fantastic novel. See you at the end of the month.

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