This was the first book I read by the Argentinian author. It was picked for my book club this past month where the theme was “anthologies or short stories”. I knew absolutely nothing about it and went in completely blind, although some other club members had read some of her work before and had high expectations for this one. I won’t lie to you, it wasn’t until I was about 4 or 5 short stories into the book that I realized that this was a horror themed short story collection, in retrospect it’s obvious, but because there is definitely something about the way Latin American authors handle horror. It’s more layered and not as “in your face” as in American media I guess. It deals more with human emotions as a vessel for the horror, more so than supernatural or creepy unexplained sounds or shadows.
The stories themselves varied in length, I read it on digital so I don’t really know page numbers, but the shortest took me around 10 minutes to read, while the longest took probably 35 or 40 minutes, with 12 stories overall. As to my enjoyment of these stories, I found them to be pretty inconsistent. Three of them stood out to me: Carne (Meat), Chicos que faltan (Kids Who Come Back) and Cuando hablábamos con los muertos (Back When We Talked to the Dead). I found these three to resonate with me on different levels.
Carne made me feel uncomfortable throughout, while also working as social commentary on obsessive fans in pop culture. Making me feel that although far-fetched, it’s a definite possibility that there’s people out there who would eat the celebrities they’re obsessed with and form a cult around it. Chicos que faltan felt like a Twilight Zone episode, presenting us with an unexplained mystery of children disappearing for years then returning as a shell of their former selves, but without having aged a day. It definitely left me with more questions than answers, but I enjoyed the mystery of it and again, the feeling of things not being quite all right throughout the whole story. Cuando hablábamos con los muertos was the most enjoyable for me, it read to me like it would make for a good short film or maybe full feature if the author decided to expand on the idea. There’s something very human in trying to communicate with the dead, and Ouija boards are just a tried and true vehicle for telling these kinds of stories.
The rest of the stories honestly were a mix of “meh” to “just ok” for me, nothing that really stood out to me, so much so that even as I’m writing this, I can’t remember what all the other stories were about. I just found them to lean too much on social commentary or be too deep on a philosophical level and that just took me out of them. I don’t think any were actually bad, they just weren’t engaging for me. The titular story, for example, is the shortest in the book and I found it more weird and confusing than scary, it didn’t really do anything for me.
Overall this is the definition of “average” for me, some nice highs with no real disasters, but with the inconsistent quality throughout, I can’t give it a higher score. Some book club members did mention that Enriquez’s other short story collection, Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego (Things We Lost in the Fire) is much better. I do think I’ll check that out, seeing as that’s a much more recent book, so I’m expecting she has had a lot of time to refine her writing and storytelling skills.
Rating
⭐⭐⭐☆☆