Trabajó como jurado en concursos literarios y dictó talleres de escritura en la Fundación Tomás Eloy Martínez The first Mariana Enríquez collection to be translated into English, Things We Lost in the Fire, is one of those books that left a real mark on me. I’m always looking for subtle, weird, dark, allegorical horror stories to match up to Enríquez’s best. So you can imagine how delighted I was to discover another of her collections is being translated. I had to read it as soon as possible. The effect is so immersive that the details begin to feel like the reader’s own nightmares. The stories here are not formally connected but together they create a sensibility as distinctive as that found in Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son or Daisy Johnson’s Fen. They are a portrait of a world in fragments, a mirrorball made of razor blades. I will begin by stating the story that did capture my interest, was called 'Where are you, dear heart?' and it involved a female with a rather intense fetish with irregular heart rhythms, and she regularly put headphones in, listening to different heart rhythms, and then often masturbated until she bled. I'll admit, I was interested but certainly I wasn't expecting it. I'll never be able to listen to my ectopic beats on a monitor the same again, I'm afraid. Muy buena colección de cuentos de horror, muy perturbadores algunos, narrados con un estilo muy único, donde volvemos a caer en la cuenta de que los peores monstruos son los seres humanos.

Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories - Goodreads Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories - Goodreads

Two stories are about sexual fetishes. How do you get turned on? Feet? Earlobes? There’s always something fascinating and amusing to me about fetishes. In one story, "Where Are You, Dear Heart?", a woman has no interest in sexual intercourse, but she is crazy in lust for the sound of a human heart. She gets medical textbooks and looks at them, but when she hears beating hearts she goes off like the fourth of July. But it gets weirder and more disturbing as she is more turned on by heartbeats indicating defects, arrhythmia and so on. Sex with danger, right. She meets a guy who has had two heart surgeries and just listens to his heart, but then tries to manipulate it so it gets wilder. Masterfully strange story. 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 She never slept with a leg uncovered, because she just knew she would feel a cold hand touching it. Hey everyone, now that the last discussion post for Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez has gone up, let's discuss the book as a whole.Sí, a mí también me ha disgustado haberle dado una estrellita. De hecho había considerado dejarlo sin valoración porque no estoy muy segura de si el problema fue el momento o el libro, pero luego de pensarlo durante unos minutos me di cuenta de que así es como me siento ahora y ponerle otra valoración sería mentirme.

Things We Lost in the Fire | Granta Things We Lost in the Fire | Granta

Rambla Triste’: If this wasn’t specifically about Barcelona, it would fit perfectly alongside the stories in Sam Thompson’s Communion Town. Alongside the narrator – an Argentinian woman visiting friends – we experience the city as a labyrinthine place with multiple personalities, teeming with strange figures who could be prophets, gods, or nobodies. ‘Rambla Triste’ is rich and intoxicating. I was transfixed by the plot (it tightens its grip on you steadily as it progresses) and loved the ending. Spiderweb takes place from the point of view of the wife of Juan Martín, and many of Enriquez’s stories in this collection are told from the perspective of women. These characters exist in a country which in the last decade alone has seen mass protest and demonstration against femicide and gender-based violence. Nowhere is this explored so deeply as in the title narrative, Things We Lost in the Fire, the final story in the collection. Despite the exaggerated premise, Enriquez does not shy away from the reality of domestic violence as a systemic issue: when separate incidences of women being set on fire by their partners occur – and people choose to believe they did it to themselves – a widespread protest of self-immolation begins. Women begin to set themselves on fire en masse, organising bonfires and banding together in an attempt to reclaim power over this most destructive act, as well as the men who started it. McDowell’s choice of the word ‘bonfire’ is especially evocative, and the character Marίa Helena, who runs a secret hospital for the burned, alludes to the historical significance of death by burning: ‘I tell them that we women have always been burned — they burned us for four centuries!’ And there are many similarities with “Rambla Trieste” featuring Argentinians in Barcelona (as you may expect from the title) but a district haunted by the ghosts of the child victims of crimes. There’s a nice link here between the dark nature of the stories and the country’s turbulent past, and in her short translator’s note, McDowell confirms the connection:A lo largo de estos cuentos volví a encontrar el estilo característico de Enriquez, una autora que logra hacer que lo cotidiano sea perturbador y los lugares cobren vida. Sin embargo, aquí no logré conectar con ninguna de las historias, era empezar a leer y pasar horas releyendo la misma página sin lograr que las palabras se convirtieran en imágenes o que las desgracias de los personajes me provocaran empatía. Me forcé tanto a seguir leyendo que me provoqué un bloqueo lector —es por eso que he estado sacando y poniendo libros de la estantería "leyendo"—, y el resultado siempre era el mismo. Me daba igual lo que pasara en cada historia. Si salvo alguna, quizá, es Carne, un relato sobre el fanatismo. The “propulsive and mesmerizing” ( The New York Times Book Review) story collection by the International Booker-shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed