The pollution, holding down whatever lies under the river, shapes the community, its children, its resentment, until they burst forth into something that will stir the river and release what lies beneath. The children born with those defects are, alas, treated more as symbols than characters, or as indications that the river leaches humanity. Were discussing her talent for forming fantastical horror from the twisted scar tissue of Argentinas recent past: police torture, political persecution, the disappeared and the Dirty War the latter a period of state terrorism where right-wing death squads tortured and killed left-wing guerrillas, and often anybody sympathetic to their cause. I was reporting as a journalist, and I hated them. Enriquezs writing is therefore often in the first person, both singular and plural, and extraordinary elements enter into this fiction through the sense of smell (El carrito [The cart]), hearing (Dnde ests corazn [Where are you, darling]), taste (Carne [Meat]), sight (Ni cumpleaos ni bautismos), and touch (Los peligros de fumar en la cama [The dangers of smoking in bed]). I dont have much contact with reality in my journalism. Anne wasnt able to submit a commentary this week. Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories by Mariana Enrquez The tradition of horror and mystery stories fascinates me. Dangers Of Smoking In Bed review: Mariana Enriquez's stories haunt The driver makes her walk the last 300 meters; the dead boys lawyer wont come at all. About Things We Lost in the Fire. It was something biblical. Then, when I was a bit older, 8 or 9, this was the time when the crimes of the dictatorship came [to public knowledge]. Shes relievedobviously, everyone has just gone to practice the murga for carnival, or already started to celebrate a little early. Mariana Enriquez recalls a world of dive bars, cheap wine, rockers, writers, misfits and el uno a uno: Buenos Aires before thecollapse, The author of "White Cats, Black Dogs" on why we're drawn to folk tales and how superstitions shape stories, Bora Chung uses the fantastic to examine the absurdity of misogyny and societys injustices in her short story collection, Let your spooky flag fly with a cocktail and Jen Fawkess delightfully strange stories in Mannequin and Wife. I felt unpleasant echoes of That Only a Mother, a much-reprinted golden age SF story in which the shocking twist at the end is that the otherwise precocious baby hasnt got any limbs (and, unintentionally, that the society in question hasnt got a clue about prosthetics). This article about a collection of horror short stories published in the 2010s is a stub. He runs Debutiful, a site dedicated to celebrating debut authors and their books. Normally theres music, motorcycles, sizzling grills, people talking. Her neo-Lovecraftian stories The Litany of Earth and Those Who Watch are available on Tor.com, along with the distinctly non-Lovecraftian Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land and The Deepest Rift. Ruthanna can frequently be found online onTwitterandDreamwidth, and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic householdmostly mammalianoutside Washington DC. Eventually, still unable to reach anyone, she tries to find her way to Father Franciscos church. Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories (Spanish: Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego) is a short story collection by Mariana Enriquez. People swimming under the black water, they woke the thing up. Today were reading Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water, first published in English in Things We Lost in the Fire, translated by Megan McDowel. The rivers dead, unable to breathe. Yeah, Im sure, agrees Mariana matter of factly, because were all about politics and football. The fact that Mariana has no such qualms is in some ways thanks to Aira. What he separated from Argentinian literature was the obligation to be solemn, to talk about politics to put imagination aside because these things were too serious to be contaminated by genre, let it be horror, fantasy, humour, whatever I can cross it [the socio-political situation] with genre and not be scared and think, 'Ah, Im going to talk about the disappeared in a horror story, this is totally disrespectful.' Argentina had taken the river winding around its capital, the woman observes, which could have made for a beautiful day trip, and polluted it almost arbitrarily, practically for the fun of it. If the foul water itself werent bad enough, she learns that police have murdered kids by throwing them off a bridge into it. Maybe in the past few years politicization has become more pronounced there; but in Argentina, politics has always dominated public discourse. Pinats dubious about all this, or wants to be. On the southern edge of the city, past the Moreno Bridge, the city frays into abandoned buildings and rusted signs. Argentinean literature, especially whats been written within the last forty years, after the dictatorship, is profoundly political. I hope theyve also translated works by Roberto Arlt into English, he was great. And then, of course, its even worse than that: a mutant child, rotting meat, a thing with gray arms, all vivid and inexplicable. A line of people playing the same loud snare drums as in the murga, led by deformed children with their skinny arms and mollusk fingers, followed by women, most of them fat . [3], Reviews of the collection highlighted Enriquez's dark and haunting style. The church has been painted yellow, decorated with a crown of flowers, and the walls are covered with graffiti: YAINGNGAHYOGSOTHOTHHEELGEBFAITHRODOG. What makes you do something like that? In short, Mariana Enriquez reads Argentine society with a feminist lens that evinces the structural violence imposed by necropolitics, class inequality, and gender. Hes only been back a little while. The river itself has been the chosen dumping site for waste from cow offal up through the tanners heavy metals. Things We Lost in the Fire, by Mariana Enrquez - A Bookish Type A DEAD BABY and her haunted great-niece open The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez's collection of disquieting short stories. In Spiderweb, a woman stuck in an abusive marriage takes a trip across the border into Paraguay. This is a police force tainted by recent history, an aftershock of a violent past. Vitcavage: What are some of the difficulties or obstacles you encounter while writing a shortstory? Enriquez: I dont know. I dont go beyondthat. You can be afraid of a monster and fear can also turn you into a monster. Its just that even the weirdest fiction needs a way to elide the seams between real-world horror and supernatural horrorand many authors have similar observations about the former. But the police throwing people in there, that was stupid. However, not until the expansion of global capitalism did Argentine literature reveal the new horrors placed before us by necropolitics. OK, nice, is her reply. She leaves the church crying and shaking. Yamil Corvalns body has already washed up, a kilometer from the bridge. Also hes very, very drunk. I used this incident, making minor modifications, as the point of departure for the rest of my story. How do they affect women? Turning to Latin American literature, we observe that the gothic has borne relatively little fruit, often considered a subgenre within the fantastic, science fiction, or magical realism (see Brescia, Negroni, Braham, Dez Cobo, Casanova-Vizcano, and Ordiz). Eventually, Enriquezs girls and women walk voluntarily towards what they least want to see. Today were reading Mariana Enriquezs Under the Black Water, first published in English in Things We Lost in the Fire, translated by Megan McDowel. I didnt do it, the cop says. Enriquez always puts forth the body, be it deformed, mutilated, sexual, etc. Silvina, the protagonist of Things We Lost in the Fire, is not yet all the way committed to the protest movement. Is fear political? For some reason that river to me always hid something very ancient, very evil, suggests Enriquez, a cosmic evil. But still: If only that whole slum would go up in flames. "[5], In a review in Vanity Fair, Sloane Crosley was impressed by Enriquez's skill at using supernatural stories to explore Argentina's political turmoil: "In her hands, the countrys inequality, beauty, and corruption tangle together to become a manifestation of our own darkest thoughts and fears."[6]. In others, "Adela's House" and "An Invocation of the Big-Earred Runt," past crimes reach out from the past to claim new victims. Of murdered teens who return from beneath dark polluted waters. Yeah, skip continents, and the tainted roots of horror will still get you. Is this enormous symbolic production around evil a response to economic crises and the implementation of ever-more-savage neoliberal policies? Welcome to r/bookclub! Other contemporary authors to look for are Leila Guerriero, Samanta Schweblin, Juan Jos Saer, Hernn Ronsino, Liliana Bodoc, Rodrigo Fresn, and Hebe Uhart. In "Under the Black Water," Marina is an attorney who works with the people who live in impoverished in the slums of Buenos Aires. Arthur Malcolm Dixonis co-founder, lead translator, and Managing Editor ofLatin American Literature Today. Cookie Notice The cows head, clearly, is just some of the neighborhood drug dealers trying to intimidate the priest. Madness Takes Its Toll: Father Francisco doesnt handle his parishioners new faith well. But then, that sort of thing happens a lot in the Villa Moreno slum, and convictions are few. Madness Takes Its Toll: Father Francisco doesnt handle his parishioners new faith well. The rivers dead, unable to breathe. The Degenerate Dutch: The rivers pollution causes birth defects. But the police throwing people in there, that was stupid. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwens underground laboratory. Her young adult Mythos novel,Summoned, is available from Tor Teen along with sequelFathomless. Additionally, the river marks the geographical limit between the city of Buenos Aires and what we call Gran Buenos Aires, or the suburbs. "She dreamed that . Vitcavage: What are you working on next? From where?, The most disturbing element to this is its source material, like much of Enriquez, drawn from news headlines. But what is the cause of this resurgence and predominance of the gothic in recent years? In the distance, she hears drums. All these tales are told from a womans point of view, often a young one, and they seem to be able to hold out against the horror that lures them for only so long. Enriquez: Sure, for example, "Under the Black Water" was inspired by a true story of police violence. Spoilers ahead. The Villas not empty any more; the drums are passing in front of the church. They learned how to swim. The time stamp suggests that he at least knew that two young men were thrown into the Ricachuelo River. Vitcavage: Can you pick one of the stories and explain how you came up with the idea and then how you crafted it into a shortstory? And in trying to make those insular locals truly terrifying, the narrative gets problematic as all hell. All of this is added to the deconstruction of subjugating courtly love, and to the sacralization and sublimation of sex, crystallized in the many women who dominate, objectify, and consume men in her stories. Mythos Making: The graffiti on the church includes the name Yog Sothoth amid its seeming gobbledygook. In the slum Buenos Aires frays into abandoned storefronts, and an oil-filled river decomposes into dangerous and deliberate putrescence.. The children born with those defects are, alas, treated more as symbols than characters, or as indications that the river leaches humanity. The proximity of others without these basic amenities creates a fragility in the better-off. What is the relationship like in Argentina between politics and literature? I like these genres for various reasons: theyre popular and entertaining, and at the same time theyre very profound. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. But now the streets are dead as the river. Whats Cyclopean: This is very much a place-as-character story. This collection comes with a trigger warning for body horror, abuse, neglect, violence against children, teens, and women, self-harm, drug use, discussion of rape and sexual assault, animal cruelty, disordered eating, and police brutality. The police brutality, I think yeah, if you have to choose something as an echo of that [the dictatorship]. And her gun, of course. Mariana Enriquez on Things We Lost in the Fire: The Skinny By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. The evil of that police officer wanting to make the boy try to swim in a polluted river when he knows that hes going to die. (Its the most remarkable word weve ever seen.) Yeah, skip continents, and the tainted roots of horror will still get you. On the other hand, Enriquezs fiction also enters into dialogue with the deeply rooted tradition relating illness and literature (Foucault, Sontag, Guerrero, Giorgi), with stories of necrophilia, cannibalism, satanic rites, anorexia, social phobias, etc. Oh come, Emanuel? The slum spreads along the black river, to the limits of vision. Clearly these acts, and the concomitant economic instability and corruption, provide the earth for Enriquezs tales. You have to get out of here, Pinat tells him. All represent nomadic subjects (Braidotti), rendered precarious and placed in crisis, who find in the practice of violence a path to emancipation and protest against the true enemy: capitalism and the middle-class neoliberal family that reproduces it. Subscribe toTheKenyon Reviewand every issue will be delivered to your door and your device! The Villas not empty any more; the drums are passing in front of the church. That is to sayI primarily write thinking about Argentina, and in a larger context about Latin America, because we share many similar realities. Normally there are people. $24.00. Meet Mariana Enriquez, Argentine journalist and author, whose short stories are of decapitated street kids (heads skinned to the bone), ritual sacrifice and ghoulish children sporting sharpened teeth. 208 pages. [1], "The Intoxicated Years" was published in Granta. Privacy Policy. Ive been wanting to read more weird fiction in translation, so was excited to pick up Mariana Enriquezs Things We Lost in the Fire. She is the author of nine books, including two short story collections, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Things We Lost in. At Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshops, talented high school students from around the world join a dynamic and supportive literary community to stretch their talents, discover new strengths, and challenge themselves in the company of peers who are also passionate about writing. But I think that readers can gather that Argentina is a diverse and unequalsociety. Except these teenagers are thoroughly unlikeable, and they take teenage callousness and self-centeredness to unusual levels. She tries to get them out of there, and he grabs her gun. But we know that it is there through an inescapable logic, an intense awareness of the world and all its misery. 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