Things We Lost in the Fire
The debut collection from the acclaimed author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Our Share of Night. 'An utterly brilliant measure of deep existential terror... You [will] return home looking pale and haunted' Observer Sleep-deprived fathers conjuring phantoms; sharp-toothed children and stolen skulls; persecuted young women drawn to self-immolation. Organized crime sits side-by-side with the occult in Buenos Aires - a place where reality and the supernatural fuse into strange, new shapes. These acclaimed gothic tales follow the wayward and downtrodden, revealing the scars of Argentina's dictatorship and the ghosts and traumas that have settled in the minds of its people. Provocative, brutal and uncanny, Things We Lost in the Fire is contemporary gothic at its darkest and best. 'The only book that's ever left me afraid to turn out the lights... mercilessly incisive and deeply creepy' Irish Times 'Books of the Year' 'These spookily clear-eyed, elementally intense stories are the business' Helen Oyeyemi
Review: Bright with brilliance... The stories [create] a sensibility as distinctive as that found in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son. They are a portrait of a world in fragments, a mirrorball made of razor blades -- John Self * Guardian *
An utterly brilliant measure of deep existential terror ... you [will] return home looking pale and haunted -- 'Best Summer Books' selected by Mark O'Connell * Observer *
Slim but phenomenal... The spookiness of these 12 stories sets into the reader's mind like a jet stone, sparkling through all that darkness * Vanity Fair *
The only book that's ever left me afraid to turn out the lights... mercilessly incisive and deeply creepy -- 'Books of the Year' selected by Lisa McInerney * Irish Times *
Fiction doesn't get much better than this -- John Ajvide Lindqvist, author * Let the Right One In *
Teeming with death, sex and the macabre, this short-story collection by one of Argentina's rising literary talents might best be described as Buenos Aires gothic -- Best Summer Books * Financial Times *
[Full of] claustrophobic terror... stylish and compelling -- Luke Brown * Financial Times *
Propulsive and mesmerising... I will be haunted for some time by this book * New York Times Book Review *
Enriquez is a mesmerizing writer who demands to be read... her fiction hits with the force of a freight train -- Dave Eggers, author * The Circle *
Beautiful but savage... [Enriquez] gives the best horror stories a run for their money... This is the best short story collection I have read this year -- Lucy Scholes * National *
An utterly brilliant measure of deep existential terror ... you [will] return home looking pale and haunted -- Best Summer Reads * Guardian *
Exquisite... unsettling and haunting... engaging and compelling * New Internationalist *
These spookily clear-eyed, elementally intense stories are the business. I find myself no more able to defend myself from their advances than Enriquez's funny, brutal, bruised characters are able to defend themselves from life as it's lived -- Helen Oyeyemi, author * Boy, Snow, Bird *
It seems wrong, somehow to call this grouping of Mariana Enriquez's stories a collection. There is nothing collected about these stories. These stories unsettle; they disturb; they disquiet. Read them! -- Kelly Link, author * Get in Trouble *
Many of us have long looked up to Mariana Enriquez, one of the great talents of the new literature from Argentina. Possibly the most intimate one. Her writing is a prodigious blend which reimagines certain traditions under that dreadful clarity we identify as an author's voice. Sharp and intricate, her genre awareness is deserving of nothing but my admiration. Sharing her work is great cause for celebration -- Andres Neuman
When I read Mariana Enriquez's stories, I forget where I am. I miss my subway stop. I hold my breath. Her fiction is that pulse-racingly superb, that electric and original. Mariana Enriquez is an essential voice in contemporary fiction, and The Things We Lost in the Fire will be a sensation -- Laura van den Berg, author * Find Me *
Enriquez's stories are not only supremely important, but addictive and joyfully grotesque... Born from the scars of a nation, they will leave a lasting mark on you -- Alan Bett * Skinny *
Gripping * Monocle *
Enriquez scratches satisfyingly at Argentina's underbelly * Newsweek *
A detailed cultural portrait and a blend of realistic fiction and fantasy, the stories feature spirits and murders, marriages happy and sad, friendships and heartaches, all against the backdrop of past and present Argentina... The author picks apart the intricacies of human relationships and lays them out on the page in a manner that is simple, but delicate...A thorough exploration of the human condition, -- Alice Kouzmenko * Storgy Online *