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A review by screamdogreads
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez
4.5
"That woman was nothing but an echo. There were a lot of echoes now. It was always like that in a massacre, the effect like screams in a cave - they remained for a while until time put an end to them. There was a long way to go until that end, and the restless dead were moving quickly, they wanted to be seen. "
Our Share of Night is a kaleidoscopic and weighty epic of a novel. Weighty not just in length, either, it's a true powerhouse of a novel, one that takes a hell of a lot of mental fortitude to contend with. Here, you're in for the long haul. It is not something that shall be rushed, in fact, it's not meant to be. Books such as this one are meant to be savored - even if the thing you're savoring desires for nothing but to consume you, and light on fire your remains. It's staggering, utterly astonishing, what an expansive, propulsive, ruinous story this is. Spanning over 600 pages, it's an intense and passionate family saga sprawling with horror, gore soaked and overflowing with an overwhelming sadness.
This is such a severely difficult book to read, like contending with a heat-seeking missile. Our Share of Night detects your weaknesses and brutalizes you for daring to flip open its pages. Bluntly put, the father/son dynamics present here are some of the most emotionally devastating things to be put to paper. It just hurts, so, so much. It might well be full of monsters and death and gore and missing children, but the real, true horror of this novel is the torture inflicted upon people by those who are meant to care for them. It's fucking mind-altering, the cataclysmic scale of this book's brutality. Our Share of Night is an apocalyptic event. A euphoric masterpiece.
Our Share of Night is a kaleidoscopic and weighty epic of a novel. Weighty not just in length, either, it's a true powerhouse of a novel, one that takes a hell of a lot of mental fortitude to contend with. Here, you're in for the long haul. It is not something that shall be rushed, in fact, it's not meant to be. Books such as this one are meant to be savored - even if the thing you're savoring desires for nothing but to consume you, and light on fire your remains. It's staggering, utterly astonishing, what an expansive, propulsive, ruinous story this is. Spanning over 600 pages, it's an intense and passionate family saga sprawling with horror, gore soaked and overflowing with an overwhelming sadness.
This is such a severely difficult book to read, like contending with a heat-seeking missile. Our Share of Night detects your weaknesses and brutalizes you for daring to flip open its pages. Bluntly put, the father/son dynamics present here are some of the most emotionally devastating things to be put to paper. It just hurts, so, so much. It might well be full of monsters and death and gore and missing children, but the real, true horror of this novel is the torture inflicted upon people by those who are meant to care for them. It's fucking mind-altering, the cataclysmic scale of this book's brutality. Our Share of Night is an apocalyptic event. A euphoric masterpiece.
"He hit his forehead against the bathroom tiles and the pain gladdened him, filled his body with euphoria, so he kept going until he saw blood mixing with the water. He got out of the shower and looked at himself in the mirror, his forehead wounded, his pupils dilated, his longish hair dripping on to his shoulders. He gave the medicine cabinet a punch, and another, until it shattered, and then he pulled out the glass to cut himself. "
This is one of the greatest works of horror fiction, it defies every single ounce of conventionality and boundary, producing some of the most sickening, violently dreadful, grief burdened and vividly disgusting horrors penned in our modern times. Our Share of Night is an exhausting experience to sit through, for sure, it's an elegantly written book, however, it's so torturous that it almost feels double its length. What a challenging thing this novel is, a dark, magnificent, brilliant thing. Bewildering, enrapturing and utterly absorbing, this is a novel of ruined lives that ruins lives. It's nothing but bleak, sad lives that slowly erode away into the nothingness.
What a crushing monster of a book, what an obscure, grotesque, distressing, utterly incomprehensible monster that's so damn mesmerizing you'll be unable to pull away from it. At times, the story borders on gratuitous, it's certainly a lot to sit through, however, there's beauty within the sensationalism. It's one of the most enchanting of novels, yet it's such a hideous thing, a beast lurking in the dark with a skinless face, with teeth designed to flay the flesh from your bones. It's magical. Novels such as this one are a true rarity.
"And now the Darkness takes me: it eats my entrails first and there is no pain and I have time to think and try to see your eyes, but now they're too far away, you're far away now, and I ask the Darkness for compassion because now I hear it for the first time ever."