An uneven collection that nonetheless solidifies Enríquez’s reputation as a purveyor of haunting and thought-provoking tales.
A dozen pitch-black Argentinean stories laced with body horror, self-incrimination, and existential dread.
Enríquez’s Our Share of Night (2023) earned her a prominent place among innovative South American writers, and the stories here deliver the same squelchy charms. The stories, mostly from the POV of women, offer some new perspectives in an already rich genre, while the horrors within range from pedestrian to Lovecraftian to surprisingly equal effect. Opening with a ghost epidemic and closing with dead-eyed children, in between Enríquez examines the human condition through a spattered lens of body horror and grotesque surrealism. Following the ethereal “My Sad Dead” and its portrayal of a lonely doctor looking after lost souls, things tend to bounce back and forth between the ordinary and the phantasmagoric. In the first of many everyday nightmares, the title tale tackles the story of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student whose body was discovered in a water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles circa 2013. Twisting a real-life tragedy into a mystery involving suicide and a death cult only makes it that much worse. Some entries are more notion than narrative—“Face of Disgrace” extends the concept of faceless victims to its literal conclusion, while “Night Birds” and “Metamorphosis” both twist Kafka’s themes of transformation to their own purposes. “Hyena Hymns” takes the form of a ghost story of sorts, unearthing eerie imagery from the ruins of a wealthy landowner’s domestic zoo. Ironically, the stories are much more devastating when they don’t delve into the supernatural. Two childhood friends are marked by a game gone awry in “The Refrigerator Cemetery,” giving off vibes from Stephen King’s short story “The Body.” Meanwhile, a search for dresses results in unexpected self-discovery in “Different Colors Made of Tears,” and a painter’s obsession spirals into madness in “A Local Artist.”
An uneven collection that nonetheless solidifies Enríquez’s reputation as a purveyor of haunting and thought-provoking tales.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593733257
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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