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by Mariana Enriquez
Following the "propulsive and mesmerizing" (New York Times Book Review) Things We Lost in the Fire comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author who has earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken—fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history—with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.
"[H]arrowing and utterly original...Enriquez's wide-ranging imagination and ravenous appetite for morbid scenarios often reaches sublime heights. Adventurous readers will be rewarded in these trips into the macabre—and hopefully they'll be able to find their way back." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"As entertaining as it is affecting and channeled into English with almost clairvoyant percipience by translator McDowell, this is one not to be slept on for enthusiasts of weird fiction and literary horror...An atmospheric assemblage of cunning and cutting Argentine gothic tales. Insidiously absorbing, like quicksand." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Throughout, Enriquez skillfully uses the tropes of horror to expose the everyday atrocities that occur in societies that abandon the fight against corruption. Even as these stories provide chills, they elicit a deep feeling of sadness for innocence lost." - Shelf Awareness
"After you've lived in Mariana Enriquez's marvelous brain for the time it takes to read The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, the known world feels ratcheted a few degrees off-center. Enriquez's stories are smoky, carnal, and dazzling." - Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
"Rotting little ghosts, heartbeat fetishes, curses and witches and meat: Each of these stories is a luscious, bewitching nightmare. Each one builds up a steady, thrilling dread—until the final lines, when the true horror is revealed. I adore this book." - Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers
"I loved these twisted tales, these lustful whispers in the dark. There is some serious power in this writing." - Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters
This information about The Dangers of Smoking in Bed was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mariana Enriquez is a writer and editor based in Buenos Aires, where she contributes to a number of newspapers and literary journals, both fiction and nonfiction.
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