Things We Lost in the Fire: Mariana Enriquez

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Hey everyone, now that the last discussion post for Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez has gone up, let's discuss the book as a whole. PDF / EPUB File Name: Things_We_Lost_in_the_Fire_Stories_-_Mariana_Enriquez.pdf, Things_We_Lost_in_the_Fire_Stories_-_Mariana_Enriquez.epub These spookily clear-eyed, elementally intense stories are the business. I find myself no more able to defend myself from their advances than Enriquez’s funny, brutal, bruised characters are able to defend themselves from life as it’s lived.”— Helen Oyeyemi Audrey invites Jerry to move into the room adjacent to their garage, which he does. During his stay at the Burke home Jerry struggles to remain drug-free and also becomes very fond of Harper and Dory. The relationship between Jerry and Audrey is fragile and complicated. Jerry helps Audrey cope in many ways, including lying with her in bed to help her sleep. But Audrey, upset and confused, takes out her grief at Brian's death on Jerry. She becomes angry when Jerry helps Dory overcome his fear of submerging his head in the pool; something Brian had tried to do for a few years.

Things We Lost in the Fire | Granta Things We Lost in the Fire | Granta

There’s a nice link here between the dark nature of the stories and the country’s turbulent past, and in her short translator’s note, McDowell confirms the connection: Audrey Burke and her warm and loving husband Brian have been happily married eleven years; they have a ten-year-old daughter named Harper and a six-year-old son named Dory. Jerry Sunborne is a heroin addict who has been Brian's close childhood friend for many years. Se recibió de Licenciada en Comunicación Social en la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Se ha desempeñado profesionalmente como periodista y columnista en medios gráficos, como el suplemento Radar del diario Página/12 (donde es sub-editora) y las revistas TXT, La mano, La mujer de mi vida y El Guardián. También participó en radio, como columnista en el programa Gente de a pie, por Radio Nacional. A more oblique look at the terrors of the past is to be found in ‘The Neighbor’s Courtyard’, in which a young couple move into a lovely new house. The reader suspects that it’s too good to be true, and so it proves:

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Exploring in monstrous form the true crime genre and violence against women, Enriquez’s short story collection remains relevant in 2021. The woman entered the fire as if it were a swimming pool; she dove in, ready to sink. There was no doubt she did it of her own will. A superstitious or provoked will, but her own. She burned in barely twenty seconds. Then two women in asbestos suits dragged her out of the flames and carried her at a run to the hospital. Silvana stopped filming before the building came into view. Mariana Enríquez, el terror en lo cotidiano". 2017-04-29. Archived from the original on 2017-04-29 . Retrieved 2023-06-29.

Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories - Goodreads Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories - Goodreads

While the actual events of the dictatorship are usually implicit rather than explicit, one story that does refer to these years is ‘The Inn’. This one sees two teenage girls playing a midnight prank in a hotel that used to be a police academy. Talk about the ghosts of the past is usually metaphorical, but when you start to hear banging on doors and the deafening sound of marching feet, it’s another matter entirely. Mariana Enriquez gana el premio Ciutat de Barcelona con su último libro de cuentos". 2018-08-10. Archived from the original on 2018-08-10 . Retrieved 2023-06-29. Spiderweb takes place from the point of view of the wife of Juan Martín, and many of Enriquez’s stories in this collection are told from the perspective of women. These characters exist in a country which in the last decade alone has seen mass protest and demonstration against femicide and gender-based violence. Nowhere is this explored so deeply as in the title narrative, Things We Lost in the Fire, the final story in the collection. Despite the exaggerated premise, Enriquez does not shy away from the reality of domestic violence as a systemic issue: when separate incidences of women being set on fire by their partners occur – and people choose to believe they did it to themselves – a widespread protest of self-immolation begins. Women begin to set themselves on fire en masse, organising bonfires and banding together in an attempt to reclaim power over this most destructive act, as well as the men who started it. McDowell’s choice of the word ‘bonfire’ is especially evocative, and the character Marίa Helena, who runs a secret hospital for the burned, alludes to the historical significance of death by burning: ‘I tell them that we women have always been burned — they burned us for four centuries!’ Mariana Enriquez’s Things We Lost in the Fire (review copy courtesy of Portobello Books) is a collection of twelve excellent stories set in the writer’s home country. While Enriquez occasionally takes us outside Buenos Aires, with one piece set in the humid north and another in a holiday town on the coast, most unfold in the capital. In Enriquez’s hands, Buenos Aires becomes a pulsating, living entity, a place where people can be chewed up and spat out after any false step, with danger lurking around every corner. The film was released in the United States and Canada on October 19, 2007 and in the United Kingdom on February 1, 2008.Violent and cool, told in voices so lucid they feel spoken.”— The Boston Globe (Best Books of the Year) The “propulsive and mesmerizing” ( The New York Times Book Review) story collection by the International Booker-shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed Disappearing in the context of the political history of Argentina is also integral to Enriquez’s particular Gothic. During the Dirty War of the 1970s and 1980s, it is estimated that between 9,000 and 30,000 people were ‘disappeared’ as part of the military dictatorship’s attempt to rid themselves of political dissidents. Many groups of people suffered from the violence, and their families still seek answers. The threat of the military state is aptly hinted towards in Spiderweb, with the appearance of three boisterous soldiers who harass a waitress, and a disturbing story later told about the military building dead bodies into a bridge. Thus when Juan Martín disappears as though he never existed, there is a sense that something underhand but totally normal has occurred, that the narrative itself swallowed him up without a need to explain. In Argentina, one woman lights herself on fire. Hundreds follow. Together they create a new kind of beauty. There are recognisable elements in this collection of the True Crime genre, a dark corner of media which has as many fans internationally as it does critics. The examination of real crimes, more often than not focusing on grizzly murder, has always captured the public’s most grotesquely-inclined imaginations, and this has peaked in the last fifty years with the rise in awareness of criminal psychology. This morbid fascination has been argued to disconnect us from other human beings, and yet has resulted in the successful apprehension of long-obscured culprits. Many of Enriquez’s stories and characters live in this liminal space between a need for desensitisation to the horror of real life, and a comprehension of how the normalised should be understood as horrific, through the metaphor of her many ghouls and monsters.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez | Goodreads The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez | Goodreads

The pounding that woke her up was so loud she doubted it was real; it had to be a nightmare. It was making the house shake. The banging on the front door sounded like punches thrown by enormous hands, the hands of a beast, a giant’s fists. Trabajó como jurado en concursos literarios y dictó talleres de escritura en la Fundación Tomás Eloy Martínez a b "Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) - Weekend Box Office". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved 2007-10-25. Eventually, Audrey demands that Jerry leave the house after he questions Audrey on her reaction to Harper playing hooky from school. This causes Jerry to relapse with heroin. Audrey and Neal rescue and rehabilitate Jerry, and he agrees to admit himself to a specialized clinic. At first Harper, who has come to love Jerry as much she did her father, is angry that he is leaving. But after he leaves her a heartfelt note she accepts that he is going. Young women in Enriquez’s stories have a distinctly irreverent shade to their characters, often rebelling against societal expectations, explicit instructions, and parental guidance. In Adela’s House, a young girl enters an abandoned house against the advice of her parents and her own instincts, and never resurfaces, ‘not alive or dead’. Once again, her disappearance is never solved, and the people who loved her are destroyed by the loss. In The Inn, two girls experience a ghostly encounter while trying to set up a prank in empty guest rooms. When about to lie down together, a symbol for the sexual relationship that the main character, Florencia, would like to pursue with her friend, Rocío, they are interrupted by the cacophony of men shouting, car motors, boots stomping – the ghostly sound of state terror and horrific political crimes. There is a sense that the blossoming of these girls’ sexuality and self-knowledge is interrupted by Argentina’s tumultuous recent history, a sense of the impact of intergenerational trauma.Audrey gets tragic news delivered to her door by the local police: Brian has been killed in an attempt to defend a woman who was being beaten by her husband. On the day of the funeral Audrey realizes that she has forgotten to inform Jerry of Brian's death. Her brother Neal delivers the message to Jerry and takes him to the funeral. Quién es Mariana Enriquez, la mayor exponente de la literatura de terror en la Argentina". infobae (in European Spanish) . Retrieved 2023-06-29. Glenn Whipp (2007-10-19). " 'Fire' Draws its Heat from Del Toro". Los Angeles Daily News. Archived from the original on 2007-10-22 . Retrieved 2007-10-27.