It was all laughs: humour, crime and reception in Páradais (2021), by Fernanda Melchor

Abstract

The novel Paradais (2021), by Fernanda Melchor, stages the story of a femicide narrated from the perspective of one of the culprits. A joke between two teenagers turns into a premeditated crime, sustained by a pact of masculinity between the boys. This masculine solidarity between literary characters, built around humor, is opposed, however, to another complicity, between the global discourse of the author and her reader. This paper aims to study the construction, by the author herself, of this implicit lector with whom she establishes a connivance, while discussing, at the same time, to what extent she succeeds, as Melchor intends to do, in shocking such reader.