In End of Term, the narrator has watched a classmate rip her own fingernails off, slice her own face, rip out her eyelashes, yet she is inquisitive. Most things in life don’t have an ending, and I don’t see why they get to have one in fiction.” Despite the undeniable supernatural elements in Enríquez’s work, each story also highlights the beauty and the grime of Buenos Aires. She works as a journalist and is the deputy editor of the arts and culture section of the newspaper Página/12 an she dictates literature workshops. I. "Spiderweb" appeared in The New Yorker. What kind of Virgin is the statue, and why do you think Natalia is able to summon this curse? I wanted to know everything.”. To reimagine the subjects in accordance with our realities, to include indigenous mythologies, local urban legends, pagan saints, local murderers, the violence we live with, the social problems we suffer.” Many of these elements are present here: an isolated shrine to the Afro-Brazilian spirit Pomba-Gira; the sex workers of Constitución, one of Buenos Aires’s most dangerous neighbourhoods; the heavily polluted waters of the Riachuelo river. Mariana Enríquez has written various stories that fit just this pattern, but five pages in to the International Booker prize-longlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, as a woman attempts to strangle the undead corpse of a three-month-old baby – her great aunt, as it happens – it struck me that when you’re writing fiction that wants to disturb and unsettle its readers, breaking the rules can be just as productive as following them. Join Facebook to connect with Brenda Mariana Enriquez and others you may know. Coming soon! Her narrators, mostly young women, are the wide-eyed observers of nightmares, symbols, and visions, the results occasionally of drugs and other times of vivid imaginations. This collection, translated by Megan McDowell, travels through the various neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, where the Argentinian author resides — a city haunted by the not-so-distant violence of life under dictatorships. Argentinian author Mariana Enriquez’ debut English language collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, had been on my radar for a while before I found a copy in my local library. View the profiles of people named Brenda Mariana Enriquez. The rest of the time she's just a girl with her pup. This fall, I got the chance to converse via email with Mariana Enriquez, an Argentine writer whose newly translated story collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, was one of my favorite books of 2017. In “No Birthdays or Baptisms” the parents of a young woman called Marcela (readers of Enríquez’s previous book will remember her from the story “End of Term”), who is … Tricking us into waiting for a ghost to “put out its head”, Enríquez surprises us with real horror. Contents All represent “nomadic subjects” (Braidotti), rendered precarious. Characters appear as hallucinations and disappear like ghosts — young girls, husbands; other characters become conduits for the realizations of fear or violence. In the opening story, “The Dirty Kid,” a graphic designer becomes obsessed with a homeless pregnant woman and her son, a mania that worsens when the decapitated body of a child is dumped nearby. The narrator keeps saying about the boyfriend, “Sad people are merciless.” Eventually his dot stops turning green as often. A gripping collection that draws on the Argentinian military dictatorship to mix daylight horrors with supernatural shocks, In 1927 MR James, author of some of the most indelible ghost stories ever written, gave a lesson in how to do it: “Let us, then, be introduced to the players in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings, and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage.”. This is the second collection of hers to be translated into English by Megan McDowell, following 2017’s Things We Lost in the Fire, but in fact The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is the older of the two, having first appeared in Argentina in 2009. Characters appear as hallucinations and disappear like ghosts — young girls, husbands; other characters become conduits for the realizations of fear or violence. Enríquez has a talent for short, mechanistic stories that efficiently deliver satisfyingly nasty shocks, but one like this – while a little structurally ungoverned – lodges itself far deeper in the mind. Some have bruises that have stayed fresh for years. Most of the missing children in “Kids Who Come Back” are girls who “fled from a drunken father, from a stepfather who raped them in the early morning, from a brother who masturbated on to their backs at night”. I read in “Rambla triste” [Sad Rambla], one of the tales in the first book of short stories by Mariana Enriquez, Los peligros de fumar en la cama [The dangers of smoking in bed] (2009): “It was possible that the stuffy nose brought on by her cold—she always picked up some sort of virus on airplanes—distorted her sense of smell.” This debut collection by Buenos Aires–based writer Enríquez is staggering in its nuanced ability to throw readers off balance. Recently published on February 1st, 2017 by Crown Publishing. MARIANA ENRIQUEZ is a writer and editor based in Buenos Aires, where she contributes to a number of newspapers and literary journals, both fiction and nonfiction. In the opening story, The Dirty Kid, a woman moves back to her old family home in Constitución, a neighborhood that has suffered the pendulum swing of gentrification. While much of horror’s subject matter is universal – a fear of spiders, or being pursued, or, of course, death – it’s often the culturally specific elements that make it memorable: think of the Middle English folk song at the climax of The Wicker Man, or the American high school prom as the venue for revenge in Stephen King’s Carrie. Dallas, TX 75208. There’s nothing gentle about the stories in Mariana Enriquez’ Things We Lost in the Fire. In The Intoxicated Years, a story about girlfriends who spend their high school years addled by drugs and alcohol, the narrator says the girls weren’t eating at the time because “We wanted to be light and pale like dead girls.” Macabre, sure, but motivations not so far removed from that of a typical American teenager. Mariana Enriquez is an award-winning Argentine novelist and journalist whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell, is published by Granta (£12.99). She has published the novels: Bajar es lo peor, … Delivery charges may apply. Enríquez, who is from Buenos Aires and sets most of her stories there, operates on the boggy ground between recognisable daily life and the dark-running streams of fear, rational and irrational, we all have inside us. When he resurfaces one night he types to her, “How will you know once I am a machine?”. Mariana Enriquez has a truly unique voice and these original, provocative stories will leave a lasting imprint.”—The Rumpus "Mariana Enriquez’s eerie short story collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, looks at contemporary life in Argentina through a strange, surreal, and often disturbing lens. She works herself into an almost religious fervor, suffering night terrors about this child’s fate and looking for his mother everywhere. I wanted to visit her house. In “Kids Who Come Back”, the longest story in the book, missing children start reappearing in the capital’s parks, never a day older than when they vanished. When a gruesome murder befalls a young boy, the woman becomes obsessed with the idea that it is a kid she used to see on her street corner. T: 214-942-0108. Macabre, disturbing and exhilarating, Things We Lost in the Fire is a collection… Translation: End of Term [English] (2017) La casa de Adela (2016) also appeared as: Translation: Adela's House [English] (2017) La hostería (2016) also appeared as: Translation: The Inn [English] (2017) Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego (2016) also appeared as: Translation: Things We Lost in the Fire [English] (2017) … “The only thing I wanted was for her to talk to me, to explain it all to me. The other part of the book that will stay with me is its depiction of male violence against women. Let’s hope they end 2016 with a great story. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Lauren Smart is a freelance arts writer –former Arts & Culture Editor at the Dallas Observer– and she also works as an adjunct journalism professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where she teaches arts writing and criticism. Synopsis from Goodreads: An arresting collection of short stories, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and Julio Cortazar, by an exciting new international talent. Introducing our 10 best debut novelists of 2021. As parents reject the children, convinced they’re impostors, the city’s inhabitants become indolent and depressed, giving a flavour of the sort of society-wide maladies found in José Saramago’s fiction. That is what happens to the protagonist of the latest novel by Mariana Enriquez, Our part of the night (Anagram), a medium with supernatural powers capable of invoking Darkness. Well, Things We Lost in the Fire seems like it is actively trying to make those connections just to purposefully cut… Mariana Enríquez is an Argentine journalist, novelist, and short story writer. ‘End of Term’ is an account of a student’s violent self-harming, with an inevitable twist. "The Intoxicated Years" was published in Granta. September 10, 2020 | Kirsty. It isn’t quite as strong as the other, but it does contain a handful of brilliantly unsettling stories. Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories (Spanish: Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego) is a short story collection by Mariana Enriquez. When she asks to see the tape, he decides not to give it to her and swears he will never return to her house.
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