(3.5 stars)

I've resolved to read at least one short story every day this year, so I've been on the lookout for story collections and was excited to check out this book by an Argentinian writer. (The stories were all translated from Spanish.)

Mariana Enriquez is a fascinating writer. Her prose is very compelling and well-wrought. Her stories are drawn from really interesting places and ideas. For the most part the stories felt fresh and new, which is exciting to read in a collection.

What kept me from rating the collection higher is that most of the stories don't have an entirely cohesive feel. A good short story is clever and wrapped up tightly. Many of Enriquez's stories were interesting and the prose was great, but they often seemed to be missing something. That said there are some fantastic stories in the collection that were finely constructed. My favorites were: "Adela's House," "An Invocation of the Big-Eared Runt," and "Things We Lost in the Fire." Overall I'm glad I read this one and am interested in checking out more of Enriquez's work in the future.

Enríquez's Things We Lost in the Fire is an eccentric, sometimes bizarre collection of short stories that are set in Argentina and touch on topics of horror from obsession and abuse to ghosts and murder and self-immolation.

Macabre and graphic, all of the characters are expertly painted as painfully realistic in their flaws and intensities. The collection includes stories that are violently gory as well as ones that are more psychological in nature. For some of the stories, the horror aspect seemed like an addendum, slotted into the tale slightly haphazardly without necessarily adding much. I found the more descriptively bloody and gross tales less enticing, but I enjoyed several of the tales that were more intoxicating in their subtlety. Most of the stories paint vivid, intense images of the cities in Argentina where they are set, and I very much enjoyed that aspect of the collection.

Overall, this should appeal to all horror fans. Please note the collection does include some very mature content and disturbing topics. For me, this collection wasn't particularly memorable in that I tend to enjoy less in-your-face horror tales, but it is well written and quick to get through.

Thanks to the publishers for an ARC in exchange for a fair review!

Wow - I feel like I can't think of any new adjectives for these stories that someone else hasn't already used. They really were bizarre, unsettling, macabre short stories that kind of sucked you in. All set in the slums of Argentina, each one warped reality and left the story ambiguously dangling at just the right point for you to know what was being implied to happen next while also silently wondering if all the characters were just going insane instead. Very interesting. Some were boring, some were overly disturbing, but most had a fantastic mix of creepy bizarre plot twisting fantasy.

I was really looking forward to reading some translated short stories, as I am a lover of both translated fiction and short stories. These are written by Argentinian author Mariana Enriquez, and they all take place in and around Buenos Aires. It's been compared to Shirley Jackson and Julio Cortazar, neither of whom I've read before. But if those are authors that interest you, perhaps you'll enjoy this collection.

For the most part, what I can say about this collection is that it's by no means bad, but it felt underdeveloped. Enriquez's main focus is the macabre, the gritty and dark parts of the city. She looks at the homeless, the neglected, children without parents, and children with absent parents; she's writes about the supernatural in a way that makes it seem normal, like why shouldn't it be a part of these peoples' lives?

But in all of her stories she relies on something unexpected or creepy to sustain the power of the story without giving the characters much weight. These are the kinds of short stories that are much more concerned with the craft—of telling a spooky, disturbing story that might entice you in the moment but won't necessarily have staying power. I prefer stories that might not be the most exciting or thrilling but have really solid, interesting characters that make me think. I found it hard to understand who these characters were, where they were coming from, and what their motives were. Instead, they felt like they lacked any agency; the stories happened, and the characters just happened to be there for it.

~ An arresting collection of short stories, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and Julio Cortazar, by an exciting new international talent.

Macabre, disturbing and exhilarating, Things We Lost in the Fire is a collection of twelve short stories that use fear and horror to explore multiple dimensions of life in contemporary Argentina. From women who set themselves on fire in protest of domestic violence to angst-ridden teenage girls, friends until death do they part, to street kids and social workers, young women bored of their husbands or boyfriends, to a nine-year-old serial killer of babies and a girl who pulls out her nails and eyelids in the classroom, to hikikomori, abandoned houses, black magic, northern Argentinean superstition, disappearances, crushes, heartbreak, regret and compassion. This is a strange, surreal and unforgettable collection by an astonishing new talent asking vital questions of the world as we know it.
I received a free eARC from the publisher, Hogarth (Crown Publishing), and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review!

I'm gonna start this off with a gigantic content warning for just about everything imaginable - sacrificial murders, ghosts, drug abuse, suicide, rape, body horror, starvation and self-harm. This book is literally full of all of those things in each story.

I'm gonna start this off with a gigantic content warning for just about everything imaginable - sacrificial murders, ghosts, drug abuse, suicide, rape, body horror, starvation and self-harm. This book is literally full of all of those things in each story, and there’s no way to avoid them if you read this collection.

I really wanted to like this, but I really didn’t. I debated not finishing the collection about halfway through, but I made myself get through it, thinking that it had to get better. It really didn’t, though.

The stories in this book were more vignettes than stories, in that most of them had no resolution and you never felt like you got to know any of the characters.

Things We Lost in the Fire is advertised as “macabre, disturbing and exhilarating,” but this collection of stories felt more like it was shock, gore and horror, just for the sake of shocking the reader, except I had no emotional connection to anything going on.

I don’t want to say that this sucked, but it sucked to read.

It looks like Things We Lost In The Fire has been previously published a few times, and the other reviews I’ve seen have been four and five stars. It may be that I was the wrong reader for this - I don’t know anything about Argentinean culture and I don’t always enjoy horror - but this really did not work for me. If this is what life in Argentina is like, I never, ever want to go there.

Whatever the reason, I disliked this book immensely, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone because of that. This was a one star read for me.

Even though they didn’t take very long to read, the stories in Mariana Enríquez’ collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, are going to stay in my brain for a while. (In fact, returning to read a few more chapters of War and Peace turned out to be a pleasant mental palate cleanser.) The stories are set in Buenos Aires, Corrientes, and other cities in Argentina between the late 1980s and now. In addition to sharing a feeling of creeping horror, the stories are connected by the way the characters are forced to confront the unhealed wounds of the past that are just waiting to reopen as soon as they are poked.

In the 1970s, Argentina was torn apart by the Dirty War, a bloody conflict in which the state terrorized its citizens in the name of anti-Communism and unity. Thousands of people were “disappeared.” The Dirty War is not directly referenced in Enríquez collection. Instead, Enríquez has transformed this trauma into semi or fully supernatural horrors that her protagonists stumble into when they try to right a wrong or stand up for themselves. In one story, “Under the Black Water,” a severely polluted river that has become a dumping ground for victims of police violence becomes a source of a zombie cult. In others, “Adela’s House” and “An Invocation of the Big-Earred Runt,” past crimes reach out from the past to claim new victims. It’s clear that nothing has healed.

The stories in Things We Lost in the Fire is also a close examination of women’s lives in Argentina. In many of the stories, the female characters are threatened by men. The threats are either of potential violence but, more often, of gaslighting. Over and over, the women in these stories are told that what they’ve seen is not real and that they should give up their “delusions.” In the final story, “Things We Lost in the Fire,” women begin to destroy themselves before their men can do it. This story is the one that will probably stick with me the longest because it is so appallingly bleak.

Things We Lost in the Fire is not for the faint of heart. Readers who tackle it, however, will be rewarded (if that’s the right word) with horripilating visions of traumatic lives, strange syncretic cults, preemptive revenge, and characters who will not leave things alone.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration. It will be released 21 February 2017.

Copy furnished by Net Galley for the price of a review.

A macabre anthology of tales of madness, and of going mad. Stinking goats with red eyes, an abandoned house with a voice that tells its own stories, a box of dead birds hidden under a bed. Tales of self-mutilation, incessant nightmares of being chased by amputated legs and arms, a woman's obsession with a toothless human skull.

Set in present day Argentina, using a backdrop of pervasive heat and insanity, these stories are for well-seasoned readers of horror. Deliciously dark and disturbing. My favorites were <b>No Flesh Over Our Bones</b> and <b>Adela's House</b>.

Dark and twisty, this book made my spine tingle with the creepy anticipation that it built up. The atmosphere was so raw and real, that this book felt like one of those ghost stories that people tell around a campfire, you know will be your nightmares.

However, I've noticed that I've been developing an appetite to consume these types of books lately. They intrigue me and in the end, I just can't peel my eyes away. I am so glad that this deserving book was translated and now will be published everywhere, for all to enjoy.The last story was my favorite, and it's the title story called "Things We Lost in the Fire." It's a haunting tale and I think that it will stay with me for a long time, to ponder and rethink my life as it is.

The only reason why I took of one full star is because some of the descriptions felt a little bit too graphic for my taste. Sure, they made the plot and events seem more eerie, but personally some of the things mentioned really made me want to vomit (with no fault to the writer, just my personal fear or seeing these types of things).

In my opinion, all of the stories were extremely creepy and there was not one particularly bad all. All of them fit into the theme of the collection, which I is all about the "dark side of humanity" and what remains in the unknown. If that's what you're looking for, you won't be disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an arc in exchange for my honest review.**

I felt like there was something lost in translation and couldn't get past the third story. Sadly, this was not at all reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's sharp, witty, and dark stories.