I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past. The danger that kept swimmers away wasnt how deep it was: it was the owner. Enrquez, a journalist who grew up in Buenos Aires during Argentina's Dirty Wara trauma that echoes across these storiesis a pioneer of Argentinian horror and Spanish-language weird fiction, warping familiar settings (city parks, an office building, a stretch of neighborhood street) by wefting in the uncanny, supernatural, or monstrously human. by. translated by All rights reserved. Save The Children Charity Navigator, I liked the slow unfolding of the zombie-kid horror in Kids Who Come Back. The visceral shock of Meat. Theyre stories you can come back to over and over and always find something new. Mariana Enrquez, by Sometimes he went to pick her up at the ministry and they went out for a drink, and other times they slept together at her apartment. Here we have Our Lady of the Quarry, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, whose work I really like. We knew that very soon they would remember how much they liked each other, and that the summer coolness near the highway was temporary. If we discovered a band we liked, she had already got over her fandom of the same group. He looked at us differently, as if comprehending that he was with an ugly skank. Perfect for a picnic with a stick of freshly baked bread. If you know of more minerals from this site, please register so you can add to our database. influencers in the know since 1933. by Silvia lived alone in a rented apartment of her own, with a five-foot-tall pot plant on the balcony and a giant bedroom with a mattress on the floor. The chilling tales give horror a feminist spin. Among them is Argentina's Mariana Enrquez, the "lady of horror", whose stories and novels - the latest, Nuestra Parte de Noche (Our Part of the Night, 2019) won the prestigious Herralde Prize - move between urban realism and horror with a very personal and sensitive look at those who suffer from the disinherited, the marginalized. Shed done it at Silvias housewhere else! There is some foreshadowing early on in the story about the owner and his dogs. She took a long time, about fifteen minutes. Yes. 3.67 avg rating 6 Mariana Enriquez, trans. Fiction by Mariana Enriquez: "Once, the bus driver said something strange to us: that we should watch out for wild dogs on the loose." "Our Lady of the Quarry" When Diego and Sylvia play a trick on the girls at the quarry, a dangerous place named the Virgins Pool, the revenge that one of them extracts is much worse. Mariana Enrquez has 56 books on Goodreads with 86239 ratings. The details came soon enough, and they were nothing spectacular. Sometimes she did crazy stuff like that, like the menstrual blood in the coffee. When Diego and Sylvia play a trick on the girls at the quarry, a dangerous place named the Virgins Pool, the Mariana Enrquezs most popular book is The Picture of Dorian Gray. Its not exactly an autobiographical story, but it has many scenes inspired by real-life events. And shes long been fascinated by gay desire; she spent her youth, she's noted in past interviews, with tousled hair and military boots, a portrait of the artist as a clenched fist, transforming her love of all things underground into a brilliant career. PURCHASE. As her fiction attests, shes kept her outsider stance while becoming an ever-more assured writer. Colonial Catholicism, pop culture, grotesquerie, and local legends intertwine in images of rotting flesh, altars that conceal their true nature, and ritual magic while themes of loss, fate, mental illness, state violence, fear and disdain for the other, and familial obligationboth the abnegation and upholding thereofrun throughout. By David Wallace. Categories: In Our Lady of the Quarry, she captures the cattiness and envy of teenage girls very well, and their nonchalance at a particularly violent incident is completely believable. As far as I can tell, at this point we have just one collection of stories, 2017s Things We Lost in the Fire. Whoever is telling this story, they do not like Silvia, even if at first glance Silvia seems to be a good friend: She was our grownup friend, the one who took care of us when we went out and let us use her place to smoke weed and meet up with boys. Our editors handpick the products that we feature. She didnt want to throw herself at him. Categories: Esther Yis new novel explores the embarrassing allure of stories that allow readers to insert themselves as protagonists. 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. Historical fiction concerning the intricate battles over succession within the family that controls a poor rural county in postWorld War I Virginia. Our Lady of the Quarry has a spatter of Stephen King: a clique of sex-crazed teenagers confronts their monstrous lust on a torrid summer afternoon. Were glad you found a book that interests you! Something about teens swimming at the quarry seems like a classic recipe for disaster: theyre trespassing, swimming there is dangerous, and theres also this sexual tension bubbling up. What drew you to the voice of these girls speaking together? The author discusses Our Lady of the Quarry, her story from this weeks issue of the magazine. Family intrigue plays out against the backdrop of 1920s Claiborne County, where racism is a given, Prohibition is the law, and bootlegging is the main source of income for Blacks and Whites. Tough and independent, Sallie refuses to let womanhood limit her ambitions as she earns the nickname Queen of the Kincaid Rumrunners. Shed wrung out the blood from cotton gauze, which was disgusting; she normally used pads or tampons, the cotton was just so she could get the blood. "Our Lady of the Quarry," a volatile mix of teenage vanity, jealousy, and rage leads to a summoning of dark powers and disproportionate revenge. In "Angelita Unearthed," a young woman lives with an unexpected burden of inherited grief. They talked a little more about oceans and waterfalls and streams, and then Silvia mentioned the quarry pools. Now, Argentine writer Mariana Enrquez joins their ranks with a ravishing new story collection, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, a volume that reimagines the Gothic and gives it a wholly original spin. Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. Drawing on real places and events and spinning them out in fantastical ways, she disinters the darkness thrumming under the smooth, bureaucratized surface of urban life, exposing powerlessness, inequity, abuse, and erasure. Girls can be like bees or like locusts: there's something toxic and delicious and exotic about them. With Diego, she wanted something special. We may earn commission from the links on this page. makes the outcome of the story extra disturbing, because I relate to her. And in the creepy and desolating "Kids Who Come Back," the lost, sold, and rejected . Magazine Subscribers (How to Find Your Reader Number), International Booker Prize Longlist Is Revealed, Shortlist for International Booker Prize Revealed, There Are the 2021 Kirkus Prize Fiction Finalists, Nan A. Talese, Legendary Publisher, Is Retiring, Worth the Wait: New Fiction From 6 Favorites, Hang the Moon Will Be Adapted for TV Series. Not as our boyfriendwe just wanted him to screw us, to teach us sex the same way he taught us about rock and roll, making drinks, and the butterfly stroke. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. hardcover. Second Hand Windows And Doors For Sale. In 2019 she won the Herralde Prize for her fourth novel, Nuestra parte de noche ("Our Share of Night"). She was our grownup friend, the one who took care of us when we went out and let us use her place to smoke weed and meet up with boys. The dog bit the mouth of its ownersomeone I knewand ate her lips. The rest of us did, but we didnt dare cross the quarry, it was so wide and deep, and if we started to drown there would be no one to save us, we were in the middle of nowhere. and Comments (RSS). Because he screwed her? Max Rozenfeld has spent much of the war imagining how the destruction of Kharkiv presents opportunities for reinventing its future. We heard their mocking laughter along with the splash. Mariana Enriquezs The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is her second short story collection to appear in English, though its original publication predates that of Things We Lost in the Fire, which was also translated by Megan McDowell.It contains twelve stories, all of which eventually find themselves in the territory of horror, except the title story which, at six pages, The second story, Our Lady of the Quarry, involves a crush of several girls on Diego, a muscled guy who falls for the older Sylvia. Its not my favorite book of his, but the image of the enormous black dogs trained to rape was such a great image of evil that I used it. ), and she gave him advice, telling him to call her for recommendations on cheap hotels and on families who would rent out rooms, and he bought every word, in spite of the fact that Silvia didnt have a single photo, not one, as proof of that trip or any othershe was quite the traveller. The storys beginning seems relatively grounded in the everyday world, but, as we go, the story seems to move toward the supernatural. But it wasnt the only one. In the end, we get the dogs only, uncannily large, and no owner. In the short stories of Mariana Enriquez, a journalist and fiction writer from Argentina, the restless dead are all too eager to return as unwelcome reminders of the legacy of late-twentieth-century political violenceand of the horrors occurring now in South Americas former dictatorships. Mariana Enriquez. She agonized with plastic surgeries for years, until she died of an unrelated disease, but to me her death and that violent event will be forever linked. We didnt ask her, we knew very well how she was when she got mad. Her body was failing her in many more ways she didnt want to think about, Enrquez writes. by Mariana Enrquez Categories: And there are puzzles within puzzles: The Lookout offers a Borgesian take on the Overlook Hotel, as a specter lures a distraught tourist through a maze-like resort to a tragic end. 3232 3 Shares Share RELEASE DATE: Jan. 12, 2021. Wow those four years . 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. Circa 1993, the writer Juan Forn, then editor at the publishing house Planeta, received a visit from a journalism student at the University of La Plata. Mariana Enrquez. Apparently someone had bought the place, and we accepted that; none of us knew what a quarry pool was good for or if it could be bought, but, still, it didnt strike us as odd that the pool would have an owner, and we understood why this owner wouldnt want strangers swimming on his property. If we tried a new drug, she had already overdosed on the same substance. Bleu du Vercors-Sassenage - a blue cheese made with milk from Montbliard, Abondance or Villard cows and celebrated each year at its very own Fte du Bleu. Theirs is a whole new canon. The black dog as evil is a very traditional image, but it works for me. class, Natalia told us shed put menstrual blood in Diegos coffee. Driving Is A Social Task Because, In one firecracker, "Our Lady of the Quarry," a volatile mix of teenage vanity, jealousy, and rage leads to a summoning of dark powers and disproportionate revenge. "Our Lady of the Quarry" by Mariana Enriquez, The New Yorker. Shed just decided to keep quiet when the smell inundated her nose like a hot pepper, like strong mint, making her eyes water; a smell that was almost palpable, black, from the crypt., And in the title story, another troubled woman holes up in her apartment, doused in cigarette smoke, passing the days by observing the moths who burn against her lamp. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/our-lady-of-the-quarry Photo by Marta Perez / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock Our lady of the quarry, Your story doesnt have a protagonist in this weeks issue instead, we almost hear the plural voice of teen-age girls like a chorus. Argentinas Samanta Schweblin, Chiles Paulina Flores, and Brazils Carola Saavedra are a few who collapse the walls between the real and the imagined. A charming, ruthless autocrat, feared yet beloved, he has three acknowledged children by three different wives (not to mention unacknowledged offspring). It was really far, nearly at the end of the 307 route, after the bus merged onto the highway. We were sixteen, and some of us hadnt had sex yetit was terrible. We looked at Natalia. Bye, girls! Silvia shouted triumphantly as she set off swimming, and we were frozen there in spite of the heatweird, we were frozen and hotter than ever, our ears burning in embarrassment as we cast about desperately for a comeback and watched them glide away, laughing at the dummies who didnt know how to swim. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friendthe implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. We were tired and ashamed, and we sat down to smoke, saying that we would wait for her. We never saw anyone else, although sometimes other people were at the bus stop on the way back, and they must have assumed we were coming from the quarry because of our wet hair and the smell that stuck to our skin, a scent of rock and salt. In addition to the thrill-seeking gang from 'Back When We Talked to the Dead', there are the heroines of 'Our Lady of the Quarry', a group of friends lusting after an older boy and seething at an older girl who's stealing him away. You could reach it by going around the pool along a dirt path that started at an improvised entrance from the road, which was marked by a narrow iron arch. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. I can see a shade of Jackson here, and I like it! We hated that her long, heavy, straight hair was colored with a dye we couldnt find in any normal beauty salon. It was just the three of them, and at one point Diego and Silvia went to the kitchen for a few minutes to get the coffee and cookies, although the coffee was already served on the table. How was it possible? Id say it has a lot to do with voice. I n The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez lures us on road trips with a zombie baby, and a group of catty teenager girls to quarry, and into neighborhoods besieged (by a curse) in Buenos Aires and (by a stink) in Barcelona, and to a sleepover on Buenos Airess outskirts, or the first-person plural narrator describes it, East "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. Why dogs in particular, and is there something creepier about there being no other human presence in this strange place? I liked the slow unfolding of the zombie-kid horror in Kids Who Come Back. The visceral shock of Meat. Theyre stories you can come back to over and over and always find something new. What kind of Virgin is the statue, and why do you think Natalia is able to summon this curse? A week after Diego drank Natalias blood, Silvia herself told us they were dating, it was official. Submit a letter: . Staunch prohibitionist Mary goes to war against the bootleggers using an enforcer who employs extreme violence. And Natalia knew that any other boy who saw her would kill himself jacking off, but not Diego, nohe preferred that flat-assed skank! Mariana Enriquez. I can see how it has that atmosphere, certainly, but the setting was inspired by a real place. Mariana Enrquez and Megan McDowell interview on The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. And it is magnificent. Its free and takes less than 10 seconds! from the Spanish by Megan McDowell. Fiction from the Spanish by Megan McDowell. Stories about our ghosts, our history and its violence. When I wrote Our Lady, I was obsessed with teen-age girls and with my own teen-age years. Stepping into a Mariana Enriquez story, everything at first appears normal: people, furniture, lighting; its all there; nothings amiss. And he said, Why dont we swim over to the Virgin? Natalia went pale, because she didnt know how to swim. In another, Our Lady of the Quarry, printed in December 2020 in The New Yorker to anticipate the books release, a group of jealous teenage girls invoke the mischievous powers of Pomba Gira, an Afro-Brazilian spirit, to sabotage the girlfriend of the cute, older boy they collectively desire. Silvia had already made that trip (of course! [3] Enrquez would later move alongside her family to La Plata, where she became part of the local literary and punk scenes. And once she got something into her head she hardly ever backed down. [9], "Mariana Enriquez, orgullo de Valentn Alsina, gan el premio Herralde: el mundo privado de una enorme escritora", "Mariana Enriquez: "Nunca practiqu ningn rito ni creo en lo sobrenatural", "Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enrquez | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books", "Mariana Enriquez gan el Premio Herralde", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mariana_Enrquez&oldid=1142726725, This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 01:28. And in the creepy and desolating "Kids Who Come Back," the lost, sold, and rejected children of Buenos Aires begin to return, sparking dubious joy out of even more dubious grief and exposing an entire populace steeped in guilt but determined to reject its culpability. . The 2021 International Booker Prize shortlisthas been announced, @TheBookerPrizes#2021InternationalBooker, Rules and how to enter The Booker Prize and TheInternational Booker Prize, Get the latest news and announcements delivered straight to your inbox, Submitted by The Booker Prizes on Wed, 21/04/2021 - 12:42.