things we lost in the fire (mariana enriquez, tr megan mcdowell)

Enriquez is something of a phenomenon in the Southern Cone. Many people whose opinions I value rate her highly and one can see why, from this early collection of short stories. The writing blends horror with social realism. In so doing it hones in on two complementary but not identical themes. The legacy of the dictatorship in Argentina; and the issue of specifically urban poverty, so often connected to drug abuse and the narcos moving in on inner cities, turning them into a dangerous no-man’s land. In many of the stories, the remate, or punchline, is constructed around the disappeared. Either those who are known as Los Desaparecidos, the political prisoners who were vanished by the military dictatorship, or, more prosaically, simply people who disappear, sometimes conveniently, as in the case of the annoying husband in the story Spiderweb. As the introduction outlines, Enriquez was born at the tail-end of the Argentine junta’s rule, and the echoes of their crimes filter down the years and make themselves heard in her tales. At the same time, the focus on what might be called social concerns, has a more immediate, topical feel. Buenos Aires is city where poverty is never far away. There are barrios, such as the one the DA visits in the story Under the Black Water which are no-go areas. But as well as that, there are the walking dead, the pasta base addicts, who patrol the streets, one of whom is brilliantly brought to life in the opening story of this collection, The Dirty Kid. This intersection between the zombified underclass and the struggling lower middle class, and then the middle class itself, is a febrile pressure point in Latin American society, and Enriquez puts her finger on it and squeezes, to devastating effect. The final story Things We Lost in the Fire, has a Saramago feel as it translates her themes into a more explicit feminist context. Enriquez’ willingness to use the coarse tools of horror in order to explore social and historical psychoses is highly effective. She uses the horror as a can opener, a way of exposing her society’s guts, in a way that a more measured take might not.