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julies_reading 's review for:
Our Share of Night
by Mariana Enríquez
3.5 stars
Set in 1960's-1990's Argentina, a man tries to protect his son from the magical cult of his in-laws, who tortured him as their most powerful source.
This is a horror, but it's also a long, slow historical family drama. In every section, we follow someone in or around this family at different points in time. We follow the father when Gaspar is a child, we follow the mother when the couple were teenagers, we follow Gaspar when he's a teenager taking the lead of the story. This book has alchemical, supernatural gothic horror, but that horror is used to show the cycle of abuse through the generations of a family. We see how much abuse the father goes through, and while he's trying to protect Gaspar, he's also passing on some of that abuse in different ways. The horror is also being used as metaphor for Argentina's Dirty War, which is an area of history I knew nothing about before reading this. Honestly, I think if I'd done (or known to do) a bit more prep work on that history, I likely would've gotten more out of this. The first half of this book, I wasn't as invested and felt like I was just skimming the surface. But once we got to the halfway point and Gaspar had taken the reins, I was much more involved in the story and rooting for him. This could possibly be because Gaspar is older and has a greater understanding of his surroundings, so I did as well - I enjoyed seeing the 90's setting. Or, perhaps I wasn't getting enough from the audiobook and should've taken my time with the print book. I also thought that the short POV that we get from the researcher was a great piece of short fiction inserted in the story. I really liked the action and tension towards the end and was cheering for terrible people to get their just desserts.
Overall, this is a thorough metaphorical horror, but it did take me a while to really get invested in it.
Set in 1960's-1990's Argentina, a man tries to protect his son from the magical cult of his in-laws, who tortured him as their most powerful source.
This is a horror, but it's also a long, slow historical family drama. In every section, we follow someone in or around this family at different points in time. We follow the father when Gaspar is a child, we follow the mother when the couple were teenagers, we follow Gaspar when he's a teenager taking the lead of the story. This book has alchemical, supernatural gothic horror, but that horror is used to show the cycle of abuse through the generations of a family. We see how much abuse the father goes through, and while he's trying to protect Gaspar, he's also passing on some of that abuse in different ways. The horror is also being used as metaphor for Argentina's Dirty War, which is an area of history I knew nothing about before reading this. Honestly, I think if I'd done (or known to do) a bit more prep work on that history, I likely would've gotten more out of this. The first half of this book, I wasn't as invested and felt like I was just skimming the surface. But once we got to the halfway point and Gaspar had taken the reins, I was much more involved in the story and rooting for him. This could possibly be because Gaspar is older and has a greater understanding of his surroundings, so I did as well - I enjoyed seeing the 90's setting. Or, perhaps I wasn't getting enough from the audiobook and should've taken my time with the print book. I also thought that the short POV that we get from the researcher was a great piece of short fiction inserted in the story. I really liked the action and tension towards the end and was cheering for terrible people to get their just desserts.
Overall, this is a thorough metaphorical horror, but it did take me a while to really get invested in it.