Things We Lost in the Fire: Mariana Enriquez

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What there is of gothic horror in the stories in Things We Lost in the Fire mingles with and is intensified by their sharp social criticism. Haunted houses and deformed children exist on the same plane as extreme poverty, drugs and criminal pollution. Her characters occupy an Argentina scarred by the Dirty Wars of the 1970s and ’80s… 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. 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 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.

Things We Lost in the Fire (film) - Wikipedia Things We Lost in the Fire (film) - Wikipedia

Exploring in monstrous form the true crime genre and violence against women, Enriquez’s short story collection remains relevant in 2021. 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. There’s murder of a different kind on offer in ‘An Invocation of the Big-Eared Runt’. Here we follow a tour guide as he shows people around scenes of crime in the capital, and while there are a fair few to choose from, there’s one particular criminal who captures his interest more than most. Understandable, perhaps, but is it normal to see the murderer on his bus, getting closer to the front day by day? As the story progresses, we sense that an innocent obsession is on the verge of becoming something far more sinister. 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.

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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: The film was released in the United States and Canada on October 19, 2007 and in the United Kingdom on February 1, 2008.

Things We Lost in the Fire - Mariana Enriquez - Google Books Things We Lost in the Fire - Mariana Enriquez - Google Books

Anything else you want to share with the group? Was there anything that surprised you or anything you learned? The effect is so immersive that the details begin to feel like the reader’s own nightmares. The stories here are not formally connected but together they create a sensibility as distinctive as that found in Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son or Daisy Johnson’s Fen. They are a portrait of a world in fragments, a mirrorball made of razor blades. stars. a b "Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) - Weekend Box Office". Box Office Mojo . Retrieved 2007-10-25. What do you know about what really goes on around here, mamita? You live here, but you’re from a different world.”Enriquez’s particular gift is to intuit that horror and ghost stories – ancient genres, as old as humanity itself – might make better gateways into a country’s past than straightforward narrative. Her ghosts are not conventional spectres, by any means; it is the people – homeless street children, groups of women with a collective history around burns – and the places that she writes about that are demon-haunted.” — Financial Times Things We Lost in the Fire is a searing, striking portrait of the social fabric of Argentina and the collective consciousness of a generation affected by a particular stew of history, religion and imagination. Mariana Enriquez has a truly unique voice and these original, provocative stories will leave a lasting imprint.” — The Rumpus

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Mariana Enrquez is a novelist, journalist and short story writer from Argentina. She has published two novels, a collection of short stories as well as a collection of travel writings, Chicos que vuelven, and a novella. She is an editor at Pgina/12, a newspaper based in Buenos Aires.Rather than going after individual men, the burning women take on society as a whole. As it turns out, what we lose in the fire is our humanity… Things We Lost in the Fire is a 2007 drama film directed by Susanne Bier, written by Allan Loeb, and starring Halle Berry, Benicio del Toro and David Duchovny. Joe Morgenstern (2007-10-19). "Del Toro Rescues 'Things We Lost,' A Tale of Grief". The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved 2007-10-27. Josh Rosenblatt (2007-10-19). "Things We Lost in the Fire". The Austin Chronicle . Retrieved 2007-10-27. Mariana Enriquez is a writer and journalist based in Buenos Aires. She is the author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which was a finalist for the International Booker Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Speculative Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction, and the novel Our Share of Night.