A review by thepassivebookworm
Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez

challenging dark tense fast-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I don't read short story collections that often, so I'm never really sure whether I should approach these stories as stand-alone or all tied together. I was getting a sense that the stories shared a common thread, but I couldn't put my finger on it until I looked at some other reviews and then read the Translator's Note at the end. That's when things started clicking for me. 

A lot of the horror in the stories appears to be going for a supernatural angle, but they never fully go there. There's always a tangible explanation for the horror involved, and a lot of the time it ties into the underlying issues going on in Argentina. A lot of that ties into the history of the country itself, which I know very little about, but the most obvious ones that stuck out to me were poverty and the violence towards women. They always seemed to be in the back of my mind as I read these stories, and by the end I couldn't really ignore them anymore. 

In short, this book showed me that I should read more translated works. 
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