The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
Critics have praised Mariana Enriquez for her unique and social macabre tales. They totter on the precarious border between urban realism and horror, populated by rowdy youths, corrupt witches, homeless ghosts, and starving women. Her latest collection of short tales pushes the unspoken—fetish, sickness, the female body, and the gloom of human history—into being with a bracing urgency. The pieces are equally socially conscious and horrifying. An entire neighbourhood is condemned to death when it doesn’t act morally, a woman is sexually infatuated with the human heart, a lost, decaying infant crawls into a bedroom from the backyard, two adolescent girls can’t let go of their idol, and so on.
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
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The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most nuanced and unsettling, set against the backdrop of modern-day Argentina and with a resounding sympathy toward persons in agony, in fear, and in limbo.
This is my first time reading Mariana Enriquez’s writing, and I’m pleasantly surprised by how inventive these stories are. The unassuming small book of short stories The Dangers of Smoking in Bed has an eye-catching cover and a theme of taking place in the underdeveloped urban slums of Buenos Aires. Each of these gothic stories has a unique premise and captivating characters. I’ll admit that as I read the novel, I was engrossed every time and unsure of how it would conclude.
The writing in this collection of short stories was some of the most creative I’ve ever read. It was strange, eerie, or even ghastly at times, yet it was captivating. A dead infant followed a family member in this novel, a neighbourhood was cursed for its lack of love, a woman became fixated on the sound of a heartbeat, and adolescent girls played with ghosts while others exhumed the body of their idol.
A selection of ghost stories can be found here. Enrquez creates these incredibly bizarre tales about the modern world by utilizing the tropes of gothic horror and macabre. She is an Argentine writer, thus her settings are primarily in Buenos Aires, and they are specific, tangible, and realistic. She transports us there, where we can smell the odours, hear the roar of the traffic, and observe the street life. There was a lot of filth, as well as all the human variation and energy, but there was also a compelling life to it.
All of that is essentially realistic, but then strange things begin to occur. There is no thrill-seeking in this terror. Every one of Enrquez’s fantastical depictions of the fantastical, in my opinion, is a piercing critique of the real world. People vanish or are vanished in her make-believe world, just as they have in Argentina. In this universe, one daughter must become insane before another daughter in the same family can become rational. Unloved children disappear—they are kidnapped, trafficked, or killed—and when they mysteriously turn up again, their families reject them once more.
These tales are therefore very uncomfortable. However, they’re also flamboyant and colourful, occasionally unsettlingly humorous, and always icily brilliant. They hold the spirit of ghosts who steadfastly refuse to submit to exorcism.
