Le cose che abbiamo perso nel fuoco
by Mariana Enríquez
Mariana Enríquez’s short story collection Things We Lost in the Fire, which I have read in the Italian translation by Fabio Cremonesi, has earned its author both critical and popular acclaim. This is no mean feat considering that, in certain literary quarters, it is still fashionable to frown upon genre fiction in general (and horror in particular). But perhaps, the reasons for Enriquez’s success are understandable. She cannily harnesses and reworks the tropes of traditional Gothic fiction – ghosts, haunted houses, black magic – combining them with the sort of visual, visceral horror more typical of scary movies (one story, for instance, features the zombie-like return of a drowned man; another a feral child-monster). This gives the stories a strong narrative drive. These tales, however, also have a political dimension. They are set in Argentina – mostly in a mysterious, enigmatic Buenos Aires of dark streets and decaying colonial buildings – and the horrors they portray can be read as metaphors for social ills. The title story, for instance, is an indictment of violence against women; but there are also pieces which portray contemporary problems such as drug use, poverty, abandoned children, police violence and class injustice, as well as stories about mysterious disappearances which are a thinly veiled reference to the phenomenon of the desaparecidos.
Most readers have discovered Enríquez through her short stories, which were published prior to
her novel Our Share of Night. I followed a contrary trajectory. Having
read the novel first, I cannot help feeling that the stories act as a sort of
“workshop” for the longer work, which gave the author greater room to develop
themes and plot lines. Indeed, if I have a complaint about these stories, it is
that some of them ended in a way which was too abrupt and/or open-ended. I do
appreciate that sometimes horror is more effective if certain elements remain
unexplained, but I found some of the stories frustrating in that respect.
Otherwise, this should appeal both to horror fans, as well as to those who
would like to dabble in the genre.
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