These short stories are strange and dark.  The descriptions are vivid, the characters unusual, and the stories - - well - - to me, most of the stories didn't really have much of a plot.  The writing is good, though, and what there is of each story made me want to know what happened next.  They just all felt so unfinished.

3.5 Stars. Twelve macabre short stories set in Argentina. It's very dark and disturbing.

Tens of thousands of Argentinians were disappeared or killed during the Dirty War (~1976 to 1982), the military junta's brutal campaign against left-wing dissidents. While not overtly mentioned, the horrific tales in Things We Lost in the Fire are intertwined with Argentina's dark past. Past atrocities refuse to stay buried, always lurking in the back of the collective mind. These stories take place on top of mass graves. These stories feature police brutality, depression, drug addicts, poverty, self-harm, and children deformed by pollution. The shrines to saints on every corner make all of these horrors feel even more haunting. 

Many of the characters are resigned to the awful events they witness. Some of them end up not helping those in need, either because of lack of resources or helping could lead to worse consequences for themselves. In "Green Red Orange," a man withdraws from the world and gets immersed in the deep web, where the worst of humanity is viewed as entertainment. Most of the characters are stuck in unhappy relationships. They resent their partners, but can't bring themselves to leave. 

Except for the first story, my favorites were in the second half:

The Dirty Kid - A middle-class woman thinks the homeless boy who lives across from her home is the victim of a savage murder. She can't rest until she finds out if it's true. She regrets doing so little for the boy, despite witnessing the terrible conditions he lived in every day.

An Invocation of Big-Eared Runt (read it at link) - My favorite! A man who leads murder tours is fascinated by a long-dead child murderer. At home, he resents how his wife transformed into a different person after the birth of their child. The quiet ending left me feeling uneasy about this family's future.

No Flesh Over Our Bones - A woman becomes obsessed with an abandoned human skull.

Under the Black Water - A district attorney investigates the case of two teenagers murdered by police officers. Months later, a witness tells her one of the victims has resurfaced. There's no way he survived, so she goes to investigate. When she arrives and sees all the shrines have disappeared, you know it's about to get terrifying! The nearby river's pollution is bad, but it might be covering for something even worse.

Things We Lost in the Fire - After a rash of domestic violence, women begin setting themselves on fire. The old women's conversation at the end chilled me to the bone.

Honorable Mention:
The Neighbor's Courtyard - A depressed social worker sees a chance at redemption when she spots a chained boy in her neighbor's courtyard. I loved how the details of this story unraveled. It went from realistic to crazy at the very end, so I'm not sure what to think of this one!

I loved the mix of history and horror. My favorite stories were those where the line between real life and the bizarre was the most blurred. Enríquez was masterful at creating a creepy atmosphere and building tension. I could feel the knot in my stomach getting tighter as each story progressed. My biggest complaint is that many of the stories felt incomplete. The tension would reach a fever pitch and then it would just end. There were moments in each story that I loved, but many times I was left with a ton of questions and no theories to ponder. If you enjoy supernatural tales and the dark and twisty characters of Gillian Flynn or Roxane Gay (Difficult Women), you might enjoy this short story collection. I recommend reading it in the dark!

This little collection comes out today, and if you're a fan of bite-size horror stories, you should definitely pick it up.

When I picked up the ARC to start reading it, I had forgotten that it was billed as horror. The first story was incredibly atmospheric and Enriquez transported me to Argentina (a country I've never visited). The stories continue to have a vivid sense of place throughout, but the stories continue to get weirder and weirder as you continue reading. The final story was truly surreal and I probably shouldn't have read it right before bed...

My Rating System:
5 Stars = great book, would enthusiastically recommend
4 Stars = good book, would recommend
3 Stars = so-so rating, might recommend
2 Stars = finished, but would not recommend
1 Stars = bailed

I received a copy of Things We Lost in the  Fire from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Have you ever walked through a really empty house?   One that has been vacant for a long time and has no furniture to provide any sense of occupancy.  After a while a house like that loses the smell and feel of people.  There is an emptiness there that you can feel.  An abandonment.  If you walk through such a house at night you can really feel it—a palpable presence that hovers around you and is created by the absence of people, a sort of wrongness.   As you walk through rooms you have a sense of being watched or even followed.  Each room you walk in you almost expect to find something there.  You may think you see something out of the corner of your eye.  You expect a hand to grab your arm as you turn a corner.

Some of these stories are like that.  They evoke a wrongness, an unnaturalness in the common-place. Stories like The Dirty Kid, The Inn,  Spiderweb, End of Term, or the deliciously creepy No Flesh Over Our Bones.  But in this house other rooms are not empty, not  at all.  Stories like Adela’s House and An Invocation of the Big-Eared Runt bring us face to face with real supernatural horror and insanity (or perhaps possession).  

My two favorites, The Neighbor’s Courtyard and the Lovecraftian Under The Black Water, slam the door behind us and leave us no escape from the monsters waiting within--from the dead who still dream and from creatures that should not exist.  These two stories are real shockers.

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez is a highly recommended collection of 12 ominous and dark short stories set in contemporary Argentina.
These stories capture the superstitions, instability, violence, and strangeness that can pervade everyday life in Argentina and turns this into more ominous stories. It will be surprising when you start the first story and see it morph into something completely different, setting the tone for the whole collection. Peculiarities and aberrations abound among the settings of these stories. Some will shock, some will horrify, and some will leave you looking around wondering what is really lurking nearby in your neighborhood.

The stories include:
The Dirty Kid: A woman becomes obsessed with a homeless pregnant woman and her son who live by an abandoned building across the street.
The Inn: A haunted tourist hotel was built on a former police barracks.
The Intoxicated Years: An account of the increasing drug use of five friends. 
Adela’s House: An abandoned house may be more than it seems.
An Invocation of the Big-Eared Runt: A tour guide for Buenos Aires murder sites resents the attention his wife shows their newborn. 
Spiderweb: A broken down car helps a disintegrating marriage to crumble.
End of Term: A girl is self-mutilating.
No Flesh over Our Bones: An anorexic woman finds a human skull in the street and attaches human qualities to it.
The Neighbor’s Courtyard: a woman is sure a neighbor has chained up a young boy.
Under the Black Water: A polluted river may hold more than it seems.
Green Red Orange: A man secludes himself in his room, seeing no one in person.
Things We Lost in the Fire: Women are self-immolating in protest of domestic violence.
 
The stories are all well written, although, naturally, I did enjoy some more than others. They manage to capture life in Argentina and the belief among the citizens, as well as the violence, crime, gangs, etc., especially against women. The stories are open-ended, with no real explanation or conclusion, leaving you to wonder what will happen next. This is a wonderful collection.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Hogarth.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/02/things-we-lost-in-fire.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1917486543

Wow!  What a macabre, twisted way to get swept up in the life and culture of Argentina.  I love when I read books outside my usual genres and get blown away by them. These short stories invoke living nightmares and nightmarish creatures that dwell just below the surface of normal life and enter into these stories in unexpected ways.  There are ghosts of the past, horrific creatures, and a sense of the clairvoyance  in these pages.  Some of the descriptions within these stories brought to mind Stephen King’s writing, particularly “Adela’s House.”  Certain descriptions of graffiti in repetitive patterns of letters that don’t seem to spell anything and the creature with teeth filed into triangles that eats Paula’s live cat in “The Neighbor’s Courtyard” are two other particular examples that felt Stephen King-esque to me.

The setting for these stories is in various cities in Argentina, including Buenos Aires, Lanus, and Corrientes.  There is a sense of healing in the land, but there are horrors of the past lurking just beneath the surface.  Natalia in “Spiderweb” saw a burning building which 10 minutes later was charred down to the earth.  Someone else in that story saw a ghost rising from the cement of a bridge, within which dead bodies must have been hidden.  In “Under the Black Water” a buried monster dwells in a polluted river, which people had been trying to cover up.  Argentina’s Dirty War took place 1974 to 1983 and though it is not directly referenced in these stories, the horrors lurking just beneath the surface and these ghosts of the past are most certainly from that time.

There are many common themes that wind their way through these stories creating interest and intrigue.  Many of the characters in these stories are depressed, sometimes overwhelmingly so to the point of not being able to work anymore, hurting themselves,  and perhaps hallucinating.  In one story “Green Red Orange,”  Marco becomes locked in, not seeing people anymore.  He only opens his door when no one is there to get the food his mother has left him.  He only communicates with an old girlfriend via chat from his computer where he becomes obsessed with the deep web, where he can find the most horrific things.

Another theme running through many of these stories is dissatisfaction with boyfriends or husbands.  The boyfriends and husbands in these stories are not loved or desired by the protagonist.  They are depicted as being over-confident, arrogant, pig-headed and most importantly useless.  The boyfriends or husbands end up disappearing or leaving by the end of each story.  The final story “Things We Lost in the Fire” begins with women being the subject of fires set by angry significant others.  The women then begin to burn themselves in protest creating a world of disfigured women.  This is a very disturbing brutal ending of the collection of stories.

There is obvious social commentary within the pages of these stories.  The author is definitely a feminist.  She has an interesting way of depicting wealth versus poverty and sane versus mentally unstable.  She definitely delves into a world of darkness and demons, most of us do not think about.  She recognizes horrors within her stories, that don’t even pertain to the main story, but are issues with the society at large.  In “Spiderweb” the soldiers at the Paraguayan restaurant with their large guns are harassing the waitress and are likely going to rape her, however, any intervention would get the narrator and Natalia raped.  However, I feel the greatest social commentary contained within these stories is directed at the horrors and brutality of the Dirty War and how the ghosts of that time continue to haunt the Argentinian people.

Each story, thrilling and terrifying, ends on a cliffhanger.   You, the reader, are left not knowing, still wondering, what was truth and fiction, and where things will go from there.   I highly recommend this collection of short stories from a gifted and talented Argentinian writer!  It will make the hair on your arms stand up.

Macabre and often grotesque, Things We Lost in the Fire is a short story collection which puts a literary spin on the horror genre, as Mariana Enriquez's beautiful prose compels you to explore the darkest corners of contemporary Argentine society. In a collection that ranges from ghost stories to psychological horror, at times the distinction between these two horror sub-genres isn't entirely clear-cut. To what extent is this horror real, and to what extent is it a psychological manifestation? These stories are characterized by a sort of toxic obsessiveness, and Enriquez never shies away from showing less than desirable aspects of human nature. Each story is fueled by a tense urgency that pulls you in and leaves you wanting more - but this was part of the problem, for me.

There's a sort of dissatisfying ambiguity to these stories that I found myself constantly wishing Enriquez would go a bit further. The open endings work at times, and add to the uneasy atmosphere (Adela's House and The Inn are good examples), but at other times the ambiguity serves only to frustrate. I was sure I would end up giving this collection 4 stars at first, waiting for that one story that would wow me and justify the high rating, but I kept finding story after story to suffer from that feeling of incompleteness. 

Favorites were: The Intoxicated Years, The Dirty Kid, The Inn, An Invocation of the Big-Eared Runt, and Adela's House. Least favorites were: Under the Black Water, Things We Lost in the Fire, Spiderweb, and Green Red Orange. 

Ultimately: recommended to horror fans who (1) aren't easily triggered - there is some seriously disturbing stuff in these pages - and (2) don't mind ambiguous endings. Enriquez's strength is the unsettling atmosphere that she so expertly invokes; this collection is really for readers who are willing to enjoy the journey rather than spend the whole time looking for answers.

(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!

Things We Lost in the Fire features twelve stories, set in Buenos Aires, Argentina, each more disturbing than the other. When short stories are done right, they can rip out your heart and change your world in a matter of minutes. And that is exactly what happens with Enriquez’s collection. Written in an atmospheric, creepy way, the author explores themes of murder, obsession, torture, homelessness, addiction and superstition. Each story features a female protagonist and a shocking ending that will leave you feeling satisfied but unsettled. At the risk of sounding cliché, there is no better word than “haunting” to describe this collection, and what it will do to you. Recommended for fans of short stories, translated fiction, feminist themes and psychological horror.

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>.

THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE by Mariana Enriquez is a collection of twelve short stories that were all translated into English from the Spanish by Megan McDowell. Ms Enriquez is a writer and editor for some newspapers and magazines established in Buenos Aires, Argentina and so all her translated short stories come from her work in her country.

I must be blunt about this collection because I was told I was going to be reading gothic short stories with an edge from an eye that knows how to tell macabre stories from an entirely different culture. The premise may sound enticing to anyone who enjoys fiction that is a bit out there, however the problem is not the writing or the translating of the works because, in retrospect, I found that the translated stories did breathe just fine even after all the drafts of line by line translation that I assumed would compromise voice consistency. The problem was that these stories hinged upon an atmosphere of pressing darkness and horrid human truths, counted on your constant paranoia and revulsion yet had nothing on the last page of each to stay with you besides an overwhelming “what the even?” factor. Punk horror is the most precise label I could attach to this collection. There was little to no careful plot development nor any memorable characters to pay off for stories that were so outlandish that they did not make me as much as blink despite the intense level of creeps, much less any story established enough to encourage you to draw your own conclusions of what all the horrors could abound to. Nonetheless, I want to talk about three stories that more or less equal the whole of the collection along with the pitfalls each established.

“Things We Lost in the Fire” is the final short story of the collection, which is also the titular story. It begins with a subway woman whose husband set her on fire while she slept because he believed she was cheating on him, and so he resolved to ruin the power she felt she had because of her beauty. Though he was found guilty over trial, his original claim was that she had done it herself. The odd phenomenon that takes off from this woman sharing her story with fellow passengers—and because of how she sickens the men and women her melted hands touch and slash of shrivelled lips kiss—is that more cases similar to hers rise with husbands who continue to claim that their wives set themselves on fire for a whole variety of reasons. Over time this becomes true as women adapt and come to admire the freedom the surviving burned women find, but it is so difficult for the whole culture to accept that the women are consenting to these rituals of burning because something so horrid even with consent only happens, as the narrator claims, in the Middle East.

To be frank it makes no sense that a person would want to nestle inside a bonfire and keep still as blue and orange flames lick their skin off because there is little to gain: no job opportunities are open to such deformed people, no social life is guaranteed, much less a proper future, which therefore raises the question of why do the burned women feel they have been liberated?  I acknowledge the fact that this idea may make more sense in South American culture because that is the home of this author, so it may be touching a vein that I cannot see, but I find it difficult to see the story itself as a proper story if its goal was to not be a commentary. If Ms Enriquez was trying to hint at the dark nature of humanity, which may revel in the twisted form of spiritual freedom the burnings bring the women, then she did not establish why the women’s spirits feel tied in the first place (to the husbands is too vague to make an impact).

“The Neighbor’s Courtyard” is the ninth short story of the collection, and this is one that showcases a common problem with Ms Enriquez’s short stories overall. It follows Paula, an ex-children social worker who was fired for negligence as she takes on the responsibility of saving the ghostly boy she claims she sees chained up in her neighbor’s courtyard. Such extreme cases of brutality is a rarity in Argentina, so Paula decides to prove just how much she does care for the children (and in extension her career) by breaking into the home once she sees her neighbor had gone in order to try to rescue what the social worker sphere would call a long lost cause. What she finds is a boy beyond humanity: a boy that acts more like a demon than a human.

The conclusion is gothic in the sense that humanity is pitted against a force beyond reckoning, but the impact is weakened by the ending. Not only does it show how weak humanity is in the face of foes of another kind, which is what gothic tends to even out, but Paula’s fate is not moving in any sense because there was never a connection established between the reader and the character in order for me to feel like I should invest in working out if she was hallucinating a nightmare or if the author just broke into extreme dark fantasy territory. This is a common occurrence because Ms Enriquez’s characters are so similar to one another that by the fourth story I stopped picking up all their names since they might as well had all been one character. Paula hates her husband; loathes that she married him. All the characters in the collection feel that way towards their partner. There is bound to be one character that is an absolute brute in the vein of Paula’s husband too, whether it be emotionally or physically. Thus there was no entertainment or takeaway from “The Neighbor’s Courtyard,” which is an issue a majority of the stories share.

“Adela’s House” is the fourth short story of the collection, and this is the one that is closest to the gothic genre. At the center of three childrens’ fascination lies a derelict mansion that seems to have a story to tell of the horrors gone by in its history. These three children include Clara the narrator, Pablo (her older brother), and the mischievous Adela who loves to tell wild stories about why she was born with one arm. The three began exploring the mansion from the outside, with the narrator recounting that the grass looked like it had been burned yet the air surrounding it felt as cold as winter air. After a few nights the children return to the house to explore inside only to find a room that does not end, fingernails about, and collections of teeth. Adela ends up swallowed inside it on that same night with some hints that a dark dimension took her. What the authorities can never find is evidence that the girl was ever inside.

Though this story was one of the more developed ones, it still left me feeling cold. What did I not get to see that Pablo and Clara did? What did they experience that I did not, which ended up driving both into madness and her brother to suicide? There was potential to craft this story into something that could stand on its own, but by shortening an arch that should have been longer than the two before it, it fell too short. There was a lack of focus that ended up muddling what could have been two strong yet separate points: Adela and then the characterization of the house.

Overall, THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE features half finished stories with cardboard cutout characters that were placed in uninspiring situations that are more shock than story. I believe Ms Enriquez has the talent to write some fascinating dark magic-realism, but her clinging to reality made these collected stories feel shallow. I will confess that she had some true glimmers of substance inside a few stories, such as the haunting scene inside “The Inn” and the creepy realization that befell me when I got to a particularly important paragraph in “Green Red Orange,” but these glimmers were so few between a mass of paragraphs that they could not carry the story they were featured in.

My thanks goes to Hogarth and Netgalley for making it possible for me to read my first translated work. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

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.