I tend to steer clear of writing here about anything with which I have a personal connection. I wouldn’t say Mariana Enriquez and I are great mates, but we did sit and have a coffee together a few weeks back and there’s the small issue of spending years adapting a short story of hers for the screen, which might become a thing one day, and might not. I actually began reading Our Share of the Night whilst waiting outside the Solis to go to a talk of hers. All of which means to say that I am steeped in mundo Enriquez, one way or another, and cannot claim my normal objectivity, if such a thing exists. I also seem to remember her saying that the novel was not that well received when it was published in the UK. It has taken me over a month to get through it. It’s a weighty text with grand ambitions, which sometimes feels as though it’s going around the houses, of Buenos Aires, La Plata or London. However, going round the houses is also one of its strengths. This is a book that deals with the occult, that deals with spaces or houses that can only be accessed with occult knowledge, and the terrifying things that happen therein. There are moments when Enriquez makes clear her literary and poetic antecedents: she is writing in a tradition of investigation of the world which might exist on the other side of our consciousness. One where the immortals wield a scabrous power, one that the rich and powerful would happily kill to access.
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