Our Share of Night is not my first foray into Enriquez’s writing (I’ve also read the incredible Things We Lost in the Fire), and I now know for certain this will not be my last. I don’t know if it’s a testament to the strength of the writing, the quality of the translation, or – as I suspect – a bit of both, but this book is absolutely stunning.

The writing here is frankly amazing. Enriquez has a flow that I’m starting to feel might be unmatched by any of her peers. I can’t for the life of me understand how she crafted such a lengthy story, with so much exposition that the story certainly could have survived the loss of into such a work of art. I mean, really. She probably could have shaved 200 pages off and still had a perfectly good, scary story. But instead, she delivered what was essentially a cult-heavy epic.

While the whole of the story is revealed almost agonizingly slowly. The pacing is reminiscent of some of my favorite horror films of the 60’s and early 70’s. Where you spend a good portion of the movie getting the idea that although things seem sort of okay on their surface, they most definitely are not. Like, at face value everything is a little off, but nothing you can entirely pin down. Then, after you’ve put in some time on exposition – BLAM! Everything is completely bonkerballs.

The family is involved in something so brutally violent and terrible that it’s hard to believe. The Order is guilty of some pretty heinous stuff, all in the service of their stupid end goal. They are willing to lie, cheat, steal, murder, traffic, etc. to get what they want. They’re despicable people. Gaspar and his father are such well-rounded characters. They are both so bent by trauma that it can be hard to sympathize with some of the choices each of them makes (or has made) throughout the story. But that is the magic of Our Share of Night – nobody is perfect, but some are light years better than others. That moral greyness makes for a much more interesting and nuanced reading experience.

I highly recommend Our Share of Night if you’re the type of person who is in to long, narrative-heavy reading. This is a really wonderful book.

This wasn't quite what I expected but I had a great time with it anyways! I absolutely loved the writing style and I became so invested in these characters. For a longer book, it read so quickly!

Thank you to the publisher for granting me access to an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I tried very hard to read this over a period of a few months, but couldn't ever get to far. The writing seems perfectly fine, but something about it is just so... slow. You'll have moments of being pulled in, but for the most part my mind wandered quite a bit.

Moody, hallucinatory, and unputdownable. This is the perfect book for our upcoming Strong Sense of Place episode about Argentina. The writing is gorgeous and slinky, the characters feel lived in, and the story really gets under the skin.

A fever dream and I loved it. The mystery and darkness of the Order, a father trying to protect his son from the experience he suffered through himself, the intricacies of family and power. Beautiful, ugly and compelling.

I couldn’t get through this one. Not because the story or the writing wasn’t good but it’s hard for my brain to keep up with the way it was translated. The description was so interesting and I was hoping to get through it but sadly, I can’t. Giving it a higher rating because I’m sure it’s just me!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review!~

Our Share of Night follows Juan and and Gaspar, a father-son pairing, on the road after the death of their wife/mother. They end up traveling to her home and learning that her family is a horrifying group of people, cultists. His son is to inherit this estate and its practices and Juan must stop at nothing to keep his son safe. This book is a true work of art that cannot be put into an easily defined box. Is it horror? Yes. Is it fantasy? ...well also yes. Enriquez's writing is not something I could easily give a comparison for, both horrifically disturbing and oddly elegant and beautiful - this book will stick with me for years to come. With it's exorbitant length, something that words very well with this plot, I'm sure I will find myself re-reading to ensure I haven't missed anything essential. I cannot wait to pick up their other work and could not recommend this enough!

This was absolutely deliciously wickedly perfect!!

I had heard about this for forever, that a lot of people were really looking forward to it's translation, & that it was about Vampires. Which could've been a good or a bad thing, as I can really enjoy a vampire story, but only if it brings something new to the table, otherwise it's just another dime a dozen vampire book, and in this case I got exactly what I wanted!! This was a vampire book, but very VERY different than every other vampire book I've ever read. It had it's own mythology, it's own lore, it's own breed of vampires is what I'll call it, while remaining recognizable enough as a "vampire" book. I was totally and completely invested in the story & absolutely loved our MC, I loved that this was unlike anything I have ever read before and was above and beyond the typical storyline, I had no idea where it was going but the writing was impeccable and had me invested from page one.

Whenever I read a translated work I always get nervous, because often the translation can be clunky, and lose the essence of the beauty of the writing and the story, but I did not feel that AT ALL in Our Share of the Night, the translator did an absolutely stunning job.

I have heard a lot of people complaining that it was too long, but I disagree. I have always felt that longer books can mean more in depth, and I'd much rather have too much of a great story than not enough. 5 stars from beginning to end.

Our Share of Night
A Novel
by Mariana Enriquez

Enriquez’s enveloping and eerie novel wraps you in a big and aimless tale of modern socio-political strife and ancient evil and power.

And it is BIG at nearly pages. Some of it a meandering and awkward chore to read and some of it is gleefully gory and vengeful.

It is bloated yet beautiful. When Enriquez’s language is spare, we are forced to be present in Juan and Gaspar’s lives, as they struggle to contain the Darkness and fight the Order.

There is a true evil villian, Gaspar’s grandmother, head of the Order, who mutilates and tortured to serve the Darkness. The Order hunts Juan and Gaspar as ghosts haunt them, and everyone wants the power they suspect Gaspar hides within him. And the fear and tension builds and is gasping in its intensity.

But then Enriquez’s words and awkward similes bury the story and smother the reader and the book becomes work again.

I read this book for weeks, long after I was enjoying it. But I feel I will think about this book for a long time too.

Thank you @NetGalley and @Randomhouse Publishing for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Our Share of Night is an ambitious, dark, fascinating horror novel that reads like a family saga. It’s one of those books I love more each time I think about it.

It follows Juan and his son Gustav, who are hiding from Gustav’s mother’s family, major players in an international cult that want to use Gustav in their quest for power.

Our Share of Night is a difficult book for me to review, because I feel like there’s so much going on in it that I can’t grasp on a first read through. There are many characters and different viewpoints who didn’t become clear to me until the end, and I don’t have a deep knowledge of Argentinian history and politics to really let me understand the social aspects influencing the horror. But I know I was enthralled by it and very glad I read it.

Although the book is large and the story twisting, the prose is smooth and it was never a difficult read. Any time I felt myself getting a bit bored with the length, Enriquez quickly shifted to a new time period or narrator and kept me from getting too comfortable.

I’m trying to avoid saying too much in this review because part of the pleasure in reading this is discovering what’s going on, piece by piece. I will say it’s very dark, and there is some very haunting imagery, including violence against children, so be careful if that’s not for you.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for my review copy of this book.

I was beyond excited for this book and it was one of my most highly anticipated reads of the year. I tried reading it immediately, but it didn’t grasp my attention so I took a pause and read some other things. I came back to it, and yet again it didn’t hook me. I decided to push through but I could never really fully commit to it. I didn’t not enjoy it, but it was far too long and it dragged quite a bit.

I love this author and will always read their books, but this one was a tad disappointing.

*3.5*

I'm struggling to rate this book. While there was nothing 'wrong' with the book and I thoroughly enjoyed the content and the characters, it was SO LONG!!! Like I understand the length, we got the FULL picture but I honestly believe that the book could've achieved the same impact with 300 less pages. Loved the hand on the cover and loved the hand imagery in the book. The relationship between boy and his father was tough to read but ended up being so much different than what we got in the beginning. Also enjoyed the cult themes in the book; certainly a dark cult and happy people from the inside wanted to take it down. The rift between worlds was interesting though I don't honestly fully understand the need to go there. Impressed with the translation and I will def continue to read Mariana!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House, Hogarth for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a lot of book that you just have to take your time to unravel the story. It is dark, but the way the characters interact with the dark parts is casual and that made it such a good read. Each character has such a unique pov and voice and how they interact with this family with dark desires and means.

This book is very long and took a tangent to other characters' back stories when I just wanted to know more about the occult and arcane things that were going on.

I don't think I was the appropriate audience for this epic. It was recommended to me due to my enjoyment of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, but it wasn't a good fit. I don't love horror, and I won't actively seek it out, but the description of Enriquez' story gave indication of more than that. I don't deny there was more, nor do I deny her ability to grip you, but this felt more convoluted than it needed to be, and it certainly could have used a judicious amount of red pen. The first half at least was more of a slogging through than anything, and I admit to having to force myself to make the effort. It also involved some pretty gory descriptions that made me walk away more than once, not wanting to come back anytime soon. I wish I could've liked this more, becaause I think Enriquez has talent, but I don't think I'm likely to seek her out in the future.

My thanks to Random House/Hogarth, the author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

First published in Spain in 2019; published in translation by Random House/Hogarth on February 7, 2023

Our Share of Night is a literary horror novel, a domestic drama with a supernatural twist. A father hopes that his son did not inherit his connection to the Darkness. When it becomes apparent that his son shares his ability to summon the Darkness, he wants to shield his son from his wife’s family, who expect the Darkness to reveal the secret of immortality. The son loves and hates his father. He will eventually need to confront his family, just as his father did.

The Order regards Juan Peterson as a medium, an essential bridge to the Darkness and its secrets. The Order has deep roots in England, but a branch of the family moved to Argentina, where it is ruled by the matriarch Mercedes. Juan and Rosario, the daughter of Mercedes, had a son named Gaspar. Rosario died three months before the novel begins, but Juan should still be able to speak with her. He cannot find her because she has been hidden from him. Who did the hiding?

Juan was born with a defective heart. He’s had multiple surgeries, but he knows his condition will lead to a premature death. Before he dies, Juan is desperate to find a way to keep the Order from taking control of Gaspar. The Order wants to compel Juan to allow his essence to enter Gaspar at the moment of death. The transmigration of consciousness is the secret of immortality that the Order craves. Juan wants his son to live his own life, not as a continuation of Juan and not a life of servitude to the Order.

Juan is convinced that Rosario was murdered because she wanted to protect Gaspar from the clutches of her family. When the story opens, Gaspar is only six. The Order does not know whether Gaspar has inherited the ability to become a medium. Juan learns the distressing truth when Gaspar begins to see dead people. Juan keeps that knowledge a secret from family members as he teaches Gaspar to make the dead go away.

The story spans generations as it traces the history of the Order. Mercedes is the “priestess of a god who ignores her.” She is always looking for new mediums but Juan is the best she has found. Mariana Enríquez details the rituals the Order follows to satisfy the hunger of the Darkness. Initiates willingly, even ecstatically, lose limbs when they touch the Darkness after it is summoned by a medium. It’s rare for horror novels to make the supernatural seem real rather than silly, but Enríquez has created a shadow world that seems just as real and even more frightening than the world we inhabit.

The novel’s first half focuses on Juan and his relationships with other family members who belong to the Order, including Rosario’s half-sister, with whom Juan has a complicated and intimate history. Much about Juan is complicated, from his bisexual relationships with family members to his parenting of Gaspar. Is Juan an abusive father or is he doing what must be done to protect his son?

Gaspar comes into his own when he enters an abandoned house with his friends. One of those friends is Adela, a distant relative who lost her arm to the Darkness. The door to the house is locked but Gaspar has the ability to enter locked doors. They discover that the house is larger on the inside than its outside dimensions. Adela enters a room in the house and closes the door behind her, challenging Gaspar with the only door he cannot open. Adela is never seen again (at least not in the corporeal world). Her disappearance will trouble Gaspar in the years to come. Gaspar will also be troubled by memories, or the absence of memories that would explain gaps in his life. Those memories will eventually return and illuminate Gaspar’s history with his father, but only after his father’s death.

Like many good horror novels, the story contrasts supernatural terror with the horror that is part of life in the seen world. Chapters in the second half follow several characters, often embodying a different aspect of life in Argentina at different times in the nation’s turbulent history. Pablo is one of Gaspar’s friends who entered the house with Adela. Pablo is secretly in love with Gaspar, but Gaspar is straight. As he grows older, Pablo struggles to balance his fear of AIDS — a disease that eventually claims most of his friends — with the thrill of anonymous sex. Pablo is shunned by moralistic Argentina. He still feels the hand that grasped his shoulder when he was lost in the house where Adela disappeared. Perhaps the supernatural forces that haunt him are symbolic of the other fears that torment gay men in Argentina.

Vicky was also in the house with Gaspar and Pablo. Ten years later, she’s a talented medical student, with an almost supernatural ability to diagnose hidden diseases. She wants Gaspar to believe that his occasional encounters with (the ghost of?) Adela are hallucinations brought on by epilepsy. The reader, like Gaspar, will doubt that medicine can explain the experiences that Gaspar, Pablo, and Vicky have. The novel asks whether disease and mental illness might be an outsider's explanation of perceptions they do not share or understand.

A late chapter follows a journalist who tries to investigate the story of Adela. She learns how difficult it is to find Gaspar, even when she knows exactly where he lives. Another chapter follows Gaspar as he is haunted by the ghosts of his father and Adela. Psychiatric care does no good in a country where disappearances are common and everyone feels haunted. Argentina’s military dictatorship is a version of the Darkness; its believers control the nation in the way that the Order controls Gaspar’s family.

The novel covers an impressive amount of ground without ever causing confusion. Enríquez’s crystalline prose build a supernatural world that no less sharply focused than the Argentina in which her carefully crafted characters live. Themes of family drama (a well-meaning father whose parenting is cruel because he knows no other way; a mother who shields her child from the child's controlling grandmother) will resonate with families that are troubled by violence and strife that has no supernatural origin. A strong ending resolves Gaspar’s immediate problem while recognizing that the pain of lost souls and the risk of new horrors are always a part of life. Our Share of Night sets a new bar for literary horror novels.

RECOMMENDED

I really wanted to love this more!!! I have the mind to want to read the Spanish version because some of the text felt like maybe it wasn’t quite translated correctly. The story is beautiful and historic but was long in some points.

I tend to take a break from only reading horror to read various works of literary fiction or of other genres. Rarely does the literary overlap so heavily with genre. Authors like Stephen Graham Jones have succeeded in writing in the horror genre and then moving towards literary. But I never see it the other way around.

Our Share of Night is a literary marvel that delves further into the dark depths of horror than many of the most brutal genre titles, all while balancing a family narrative that spans multiple points of view and several decades. Mariana Enríquez took a near 600 page novel and plotted it out with exquisite care, creating a perfectly paced and exceptionally creepy environment in which to hold her dark ceremonies.

The world of Our Share of Night feels lived in, its characters manage to be developed and fleshed out far more than a typical horror novel would be able to manage, and, despite how bleak and oppressive its tone is, Enríquez is able to inject a startling amount of warmth and heart (😏) into an otherwise cold world.

Juan is a loving father who wants to protect his son. Gaspar is a lonely boy who is finding himself in the world, curious, tenacious, and both powerful but powerless to change his future. Rosario is a loving mother and partner who fears what the darkness holds for the future of those she loves. Mercedes is a horrifying and reprehensible power of pure evil. There are many more side characters and important pawns in the power struggle of The Order and what the darkness demands, but these four are the pillars on which Our Share of Night is built.

Our Share of Night deftly handles 1980s South American politics, the AIDS crisis, family drama, occultism, grief, horror, and love — all of which get enough time on the page to feel effective and worthwhile.

This book isn’t for everyone. It’s long, it’s dense, it’s scary, and above all else it’s unrelenting. Our Share of Night will grip you tightly within the grasp of its beautiful golden claws — and mark you as one of its own.

5/5 🌟

Special thanks to Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I've been waiting to read this book and it did not disappoint. I love this book
. One of my favorites of 2023!

A definite masterpiece!

This horror masterpiece subtly picks apart colonialism, military regimes and social constructs. It brings to light how family can be imprisoning and hold you back. At the same time, it demonstrates acceptance of so many culturally taboo things. It shows how certain fixations can go beyond obsessive and instead be repulsive. Juan is taken in as a child after Rosario's uncle saves his life. At this time, he is also recognized as a medium for their Order, a cult-like group that sounds of dark magic, witchcraft and other dark practices. They stop at nothing to get their desire, immortality. It is dark and gruesome, resulting in many "sacrifices" and deaths. Juan falls in love with Rosario, and they have a child, Gaspar, who they request that the Order stay away from even though they have already claimed him as a vessel for the medium when Juan dies. When Rosario dies, they return to her family and the Order for some time. During this time, Juan finds a way to protect Gaspar and enlists his brother- and sister-in-law to help. It is a tale of resistance and fighting the darkness. Overall, it was intriguing, but I did feel that some things might have been lost in translation.