It’s mostly women-young women-at the helm of these carnal tales, whether as disturbed narrator or disturbing protagonist it’s mostly contemporary Argentina which serves as the backdrop for Enríquez’s staple urban realist narratives. Meanwhile, ‘Meat’ felt just a touch too close-by which I mean, exactly close enough-to a possible reality in which pop idols are devoured by their fans.
‘Our Lady of the Quarry’, with its visceral evocation of sheer teenage vengefulness was another favourite, while the sweaty self-consciousness of ‘Back When We Talked to the Dead’ had a suitably eerie conclusion and featured some classic horror: Ouija board hijinks. A stand-out for me was ‘Where Are You, Dear Heart?’ about a woman horny for heartbeats which leads to a grim and gruesome conclusion, exploring the dangers of going to extremes. Hunger and obsession slice through the stories, whether literal, sexual, or otherwise. We open on a woman oddly relaxed about the ghostly presence of her grandmother’s dead sibling and things only get weirder from there. In just twelve (mostly) brief short stories-that manage to be both casually creepy and captivating-Enríquez conjures up armies of dead and disappeared children in the parks of Buenos Aires, sensorial assaults in Barcelona, and episodes of gory karmic retribution. The 187 pages of Enríquez’s second book to be translated into English are haunted by ghostly children, familial curses, and vengeful teenagers. I know! And yet, I’m sort of glad I started here-went in with ‘fresh’ eyes, so to speak-because The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is a near-flawless collection of uncanny, unnerving, and unsettling psychological short stories that will have you sleeping with the lights on. I’d never read anything by Argentine author Mariana Enríquez before The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.
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