Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories
Mariana Enriquez

​A chilling, pulse-racing collection that unearths the sinister horrors lurking beneath the everyday.

Disappearances, nightmares, and mysteries abound in Mariana Enriquez’s disquieting tales of contemporary Argentina: a student rips out her own fingernails and lashes, attracting the attentions of another; an adventurous child wanders into an abandoned house and never comes out; a graphic designer becomes fascinated with a homeless boy and his mother; convinced that her new neighbor is holding a young boy hostage, a woman sets out to rescue him; a recluse surfs the deep web, further withdrawing from everyone in his life; a group of women begin self-immolating in order to protest domestic violence. In Things We Lost in the Fire, Enriquez infuses the mundane with the unimaginable, crafting a brand of horror that is so acutely frightening precisely because it originates in a familiar reality.

This short-story collection explores issues of class, substance abuse, corruption, poverty, and violence through the lens of obsession, as powerful and privileged characters become fascinated with those that exist at the margins of their world. This allows Enriquez to explore the characters’ feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy, as well as their struggles to feel empathy and compassion for those who are different from themselves. This emotional complexity is underscored by Enriquez’s simple, clear-eyed prose, which moves forward, unceasingly, sweeping the reader under and leading them to each horrifying, inevitable conclusion. Haunting and thought-provoking, this is a collection that you won’t soon forget.

Mariana Enríquez is an Argentinian journalist, short story writer, and novelist. She is the author of  Los peligros de fumar en la cama (2009), Éste es el mar (2017), Nuestra parte de noche (2019), among other works. Her writing has earned her numerous accolades, including the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona and the Herralde Prize. She resides in Buenos Aires.

Things We Lost in the Fire is a publication by Hogarth Press. Click here to purchase.
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Reviewed by
Isabella Pilotta Gois
​9/11/2020

Isabella Pilotta Gois is a Venezuelan writer and recent graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied Comparative Literature. She currently resides in Puerto Rico.

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