Emily May's Reviews > Things We Lost in the Fire

“What do you know about what really goes on around here, mamita? You live here, but you’re from a different world.”

3 1/2 stars. ^This is exactly how this whole book feels. I recognise the world in it; I suppose, in many ways, it's the one I live in... except it also isn't. It’s the dark spaces and the secrets hidden just under the surface of the world we know.

I can definitely feel the Shirley Jackson vibe. Enríquez has written a collection of Argentinian horror stories, full of atmosphere, suspense and ofttimes the grotesque. But, like Jackson, most of these stories are characterized by their ability to feel normal at first, to portray real life and real people, but create a sense of the unnatural beneath it all. It's an unsettling undercurrent running behind the main events of each story.

The author deftly weaves painfully human characters. Whether they be narcos, drug users or transvestites, they all come to life on the page, and in the intense, scary, manic and yet somewhat familiar world of the novel.

Some of the stories are stranger than others and those were perhaps my least favourite. The ones where the author ranked up the ick factor were almost too much for me. Gory descriptions of the insides of small animals is not my cup of tea. But these were in the minority. Others captured small circles and underbellies of our own world in an extremely intense and emotive way.

For example, "The Intoxicated Years". About those friendships so close, personal and intense that it's hard to separate yourself from the other person. This story chronicles a downward spiral into drug abuse over several years in the late 80s/early 90s. Intoxicating feels a deeply appropriate word, about more than just drug abuse - equally about the intoxicating nature of the relationships within, and the heady writing itself.

Others border on more traditional horror about haunted houses and things that go bump in the night. Yet, of course, Enríquez puts her own spin on it and nothing is ever quite so simple as a haunted house. Still, passages like this will give traditional horror lovers some chills:

“The house tells us the stories. You don’t hear it?”
“Poor thing,” said Pablo. “She doesn’t hear the house’s voice.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Adela. “We’ll tell you.”
And they told me.
About the old woman, whose eyes had no pupils but who wasn’t blind.
About the old man, who burned medical books out by the empty chicken coop, in the backyard.
About the backyard, just as dry and dead as the front, full of little holes like the dens of rats.
About a faucet that never stopped dripping, because the thing that lived in the house needed water.

Frightening, dramatic, and impossible to look away from.

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