An amazing book of short, gothic horror stories. Enriquez is a fantastic writer. I was thinking about this one for a long time after finishing!

A fabulous collection of stories by a left-handed author

Relatable and surprising. I highly recommend this book.

5 out of 5 Stars

This book left me reeling and heavy and there is still so much I'm unpacking. So much I never knew about, so much I now feel I know almost too much about. A little heavy for a lot of HS kids but seriously necessary for several of my 12th graders so I gladly bought it and added it to my shelves.

So much of the grotesque here; it was not to my taste even though many of the narratives were striking. Very well written and powerful, but disturbing.

7/2018 update: I heard the author speak about the challenges of creating something in the horror genre in a place where that genre doesn't traditionally exist (South America). That challenge was intensified by the fact that so much of daily life in parts of South America already qualifies as "horror" to North Americans; how does one imbue daily terror with the literary sensation of horror?

I'm not sure there are any easy answers to how Enriquez does what she did, but suffice it to say these stories are extremely effective. Like many of Stephen King's best works, the details of these stories have stuck with me even a year after I read them.

I received a copy of this ebook from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

There were only two, maybe three, good stories in this book. There is a skill to writing endings to short stories and the author fell short of that on most of these. There was an amateur feel to a good percentage of the writing. I do, however, see a writer's spark here, so I will certainly give her next publication a chance.

The stories were okay, but I wasn't too interested in this one. I did not finish the book, though I would give it another shot on a physical copy of the book.

'Things We Lost in the Fire' by Mariana Enriquez with translation by Megan McDowell is a collection of 12 stories that all start fairly normally, then twist to the dark side of things.

Since the author is from Argentina, the book is a look at the kinds of things the author must see around her. The stories deal with inequality, brutal violence, disappearing citizens, and bands of men out to do evil. There are blackouts and black magic. There are frightened and confused people, and people who act to never be victims again.

I enjoyed the stories. Think of them more as dark literary fiction, and not straight horror. The horror just seems to be a part of these stories, and that makes it more unsettling. I found the collection one of the more unusual things I've read recently.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Crown Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

an incredibly potent collection of short stories that roams the territory between realism and the supernatural quite easily. this is the first book i've read by the author and i look forward to seeing more of her work translated in the future.

The collection of stories in Things We Lost in the Fire is dark and powerful, just like a raging inferno. There is a continued theme of women on the verge of a turning point in their lives, of children vulnerable to evil, and unknown forces in the world. Some are actual ghost stories, others will make you wish they were. Take it slowly, let the tales burn you.

Zombies, self-immolation, hikikomori, black magic are just some of the themes in this volume of short stories set in Argentina. The stories are dark, intelligent contemporary horror. Argentina's political history and modern problems make an amazing landscape for Enriquez's tales, filled with fascinating and compelling characters.

Roberto Bolano is often shorthand for new latin american writing. It isn't Gabriel García Márquez's magical realism. Bolano's works are almost entirely about impending violence whether seen or in the shadows. In a short story, the reader can feel the menace without showing its face. In Mariana Enriquez's work, we see the face and it is completely human. These short stories are dark and masterful. Enriquez knows just the right notes to hit to terrify. It isn't a frightening concept, or monster, or idea, it is a human face that is menancing, one that is our own.

In The Dirty Kid, we see how far empathy can go. A young woman moves into her parents house in a run down part of the city. Thinking she can show her toughness and empathy in staying there, she finds herself unequipped to handle it. The ending of this story is haunting. Other stories demonstrate this same breakdown. The main character goes to seek truth or make something right only to be overwhelmed by the horror of it. Some stories are Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown on steroids.




NOTES FROM
Things We Lost in the Fire

Mariana Enriquez

April 22, 2017
The Dirty Kid
Maybe, as everyone had said, I was fixated on that house because it allowed me to isolate myself, because no one visited me there, because I was depressed and I made up romantic stories about a neighborhood that really was just shit, shit, shit. That was what my mother had shouted at me and I swore never to speak to her again, but now, with my hands around the young addict’s neck, I thought maybe she wasn’t entirely wrong. Maybe I wasn’t the princess in her castle; maybe I was a madwoman locked in her tower.

April 22, 2017
The Dirty Kid
I gave them to him!” she shouted. The words were for me; she was looking me right in the eyes with that horrible recognition. And then she caressed her belly with both hands and said, clearly, loudly: “This one too. I promised him them both.”

April 22, 2017
The Dirty Kid
How could I have let him walk around barefoot, at night, on these dark streets? I should never have let him go back to his mother. When she threatened me with the bottle I should have called the police, and they’d have thrown her in jail and I’d have kept the boy or helped him get adopted by a family who’d love him. But no. I got mad at him for being ungrateful, for not defending me from his mother! I got mad at a terrified child, son of an addict mother, a five-year-old boy who lives on the street!

April 22, 2017
The Dirty Kid
the web would only be a boiling cauldron of rumors and insanity.

April 24, 2017
The Intoxicated Years
But we were so sick of everything they said: my parents, the other parents, always announcing the end, the catastrophe, the imminent return to blackouts and all the pathetic hardships. Now they didn’t cry over inflation; they cried because they didn’t have jobs. They cried as if they weren’t to blame for any of it. We hated innocent people.

April 25, 2017
An Invocation of the Big-Eared Runt
He had no motive besides desire, and he seemed like some kind of metaphor, the dark side of proud turn-of-the-century Argentina. He was a foretaste of evils to come, a warning that there was much more to the country than palaces and estates; he was a slap in the face to the provincialism of the Argentine elites who worshipped Europe and believed only good things could come from the magnificent and yearned-for old country.

April 25, 2017
Spiderweb
We all make mistakes,” she told me. “The important thing is to fix them.” “And how does this get fixed?” “Babe, death is the only problem without a solution.”

April 25, 2017
Spiderweb
I saw that trapped under the windshield wipers were the bodies of many dead damselflies. A lot of people get them confused them with dragonflies, but the damselfly is different, though they’re in the same family. They are less graceful, their horrible eyes are farther apart, and the body, that straight and vaguely phallic body, is longer. They’re lazier, too. I was always afraid of them and I never understood when years later they came into fashion with teenagers, who tattooed themselves with tender designs, dolphins and butterflies and also those horrible dragonflies with their blind eyes. Some people call them aguaciles—from the word agua—because bands of them tend to show up before it rains, when it’s really hot. That word makes me think of alguacil—sheriff—and I think a lot of people call the insect that, as if it were the police of the air.

April 25, 2017
Spiderweb
Juan Martín got up and I could just imagine what was going to happen. He was going to yell at them to leave her alone; he was going to play the hero and then they would arrest all three of us. They would rape Natalia and me in the dictator’s dungeons, day and night, and they would torture me with electric shocks on my pubic hair that was as blond as the hair on my head, and they would drool while they said fucking little gringa, fucking Argentine, and maybe they would kill Natalia quickly, for being dark, for being a witch, for being insolent. And all because he needed to be a hero and prove who knows what. Anyway, he would have it easy because they killed men with a bullet through the back of the skull, and done. They weren’t fags, the Paraguayan soldiers, of course they weren’t.

April 25, 2017
Spiderweb
But they’ve been blessed with the purest possible justice; still and grounded, they look like a pest, but when they fly and light up, they are the closest thing to magic, a portent of beauty and goodness.

April 25, 2017
The Neighbor’s Courtyard
if Miguel shared the responsibility with her and they managed to do something for the boy, she felt like maybe they could recover something of what they used to have, those years of taking the car wherever they felt like on weekends, to provincial villages in the middle of nowhere, to eat good barbecue and take photos of old houses, or the Sundays of sex, with the mattress on the floor and the marijuana cured with honey that her husband’s brother grew.

April 26, 2017
Things We Lost in the Fire
Burnings are the work of men. They have always burned us. Now we are burning ourselves. But we’re not going to die; we’re going to flaunt our scars.”

All Excerpts From

Enriquez, Mariana. “Things We Lost in the Fire.” Crown Publishing, 2017-02-21. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

This is an excellent story collection. Although I'm not sure collection is the correct term since it is one author. It's also a translation, which proves that it is probably pretty good. Why would they bother translating it if it were crap? The stories are based in Argentina and show the lives of the people living there. There is something for everyone in this collection (still using that word). Some of the stories are quite creepy, some are political, others show humanity at its best and worst. I thought they were all quite great.

My determination to read more of regional literature from different countries has lead me to ‘All the things we lost in fire’. This one is a collection of short stories set in Argentina. The book has a whiff of social and political air into the stories. The wave of witch hunting and horror stories has given birth to many of the stories inside. Some of them even talk about the political unrest. The dictatorship has changed the way people live their lives.

This is the first book I have read from this country; and of a literary voice so crisp it gives you chill in hot Argentinean summer.

So even though I received this on Netgalley to review-I had to buy myself a copy of this book. That's how much I loved it.
This was so raw and dark-I absolutely loved every single short story in this book. Each character you can feel the emotions from -whether it be the manic and the extremes of someone, to the downright horror hiding within.
Every story was unique; however, my favorite was " Under the Black Water.

I sincerely want to thank Mariana Enriquez and Crown Publishing for giving me the opportunity to read and review this.

This book is one of my favorite reads of 2017!

This book wasn't for me, but I suspect I am not the audience for it.

Beautifully written, dark stories. Some hard to read but impossible to put down once you've started.

I love that most of the protagonists are young, female, and discontent. These short stories give us a slice of life and take us through the (back) streets of Buenos Aires as well. The protagonists slide in and out of moments of dread and fear while trying to be good people.

SOMEONE PLEASE TURN THE LIGHTS ON!!! *shudders with fear*

This book is made of pure unadulterated DARK DARK DARK matter!

4.5 Dark matter stars!

Oh man! Holy grittiness, this book! This is beyond horror but dark, cruel, raw, dark matter. The one that goes way beyond vampire, and ghosts. Because this is REAL. As real as it get;s this is the stuff that dwells in the murky depths of the most disturbed human minds. The horrible stuff that DOES happen in the world. Unfortunately.

SO WHY ON EARTH I READ AND LIKE THIS BOOK SO MUCH?

Because, for some like me, this kinda darkness is like a syrupy deliciousness that’s totally addictive like hot chocolate in winter. So about 20% into this book after reading this most gruesome topics (including children torture) I already knew only the darkest darkness awaited me BUT like an addict, I kept subjecting myself to the pain because this storytelling is just engrossing totally irresistible. Resistance is futile I drank every bitter drop on this sickening concoction of everything that is gory, brutal, violent, bloody creepy nightmarish in this world.

If you can stomach it, this is one phenomenal ride of gifted storytelling and powerful characterization. One of the best characterization I have read. These are short stories, and in one or two paragraphs you feel you have known these characters all your life. The world built around this characters so real and rich too! If you are not very acquainted with South American culture a few things may be very shocking, though.

The striking imagery and world building will put this world under a magnifier in a very close and personal perspective for you. You’ll experience the smell, colors and shapes of this culture with all the good an evil but mostly the evil. You’ll experience the macro world of the political turmoil, the arbitrariness and bigotry of totalitarian regimes, the misery, the hardship, the human rights violation. You’ll also experience the micro world. You’ll feel the desperation of the drug addict and street workers, the loneliness and hunger of the homeless child, the disgust of a wife of an abusive husband.

Most stories have unresolved endings open to interpretation and I fail to interpret many of them. That’s why I didn’t give it a 5-star review but these stories do deliver. I may read the Spanish version to see if anything has been lost in translation and maybe change the rating to five stars. I’m also curios if the writing is this awesome in the language it was originally written.

As I said, be prepared to be submerged in a very turbid concoction of everything that is shadowy in human nature [drug traffic, addition, promiscuity, child abuse] mixed with the supernatural of witchcraft, apparitions, and satanic cults. And also this narrated with the grittiest suspense! Please remember my warning the content is EXTREMELY disturbing [as in children torture, abuse and mutilation disturbing]. Some of it was too much for me and I had to take a break and even doubted if I would finish the book but not ALL the stories are like that brutal so I did finish it. If you like dark tales and dystopian anchored in reality you’ll find this book fascinated.