The Dangers Of Smoking In Bed

Author: Mariana Enriquez

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General Fields

  • : 33.00 NZD
  • : 9781783786718
  • : Granta Books
  • : Granta Books
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  • : February 2021
  • : {"length"=>["21.6"], "width"=>["13.5"], "units"=>["Centimeters"]}
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Mariana Enriquez
  • :
  • : Paperback
  • : 2105
  • :
  • : English
  • : 863.7
  • : 208
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Barcode 9781783786718
9781783786718

Local Description

'Mariana Enriquez is a mesmerizing writer who demands to be read. Like Bolano, she is interested in matters of life and death, and her fiction hits with the full force of a train' - Dave Eggers

Welcome to Buenos Aires, a city thrumming with murderous intentions and morbid desires, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses. These brilliant, unsettling tales of revenge, witchcraft, fetishes, disappearances and urban madness spill over with women and girls whose dark inclinations will lead them over the edge.

'After you've lived in Enriquez's marvellous brain for the time it takes to read THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED, the known world feels ratcheted a few degrees off-centre. Mariana Enriquez's stories are smoky, carnal and dazzling' - Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

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STELLA'S REVIEW:
Let the title of this short story collection be a warning. In the second of Mariana Enriquez's collections to be translated into English, the macabre and disorderly rise to the surface. There are ghosts in these pages, phantoms and hauntings. Some reside just under the surface in superstition, some make their presence known by their unsettled, revenge-seeking wanderings, while others are phantoms that walk in broad daylight, bold and violent. Enriquez’s tales resist the easy condition of horror or the gothic, creeping under our skin — making us uneasy yet fascinated. We can not turn away, as our curiosity gets the better of us. The stories meld the mundane, the daily chores, and the familiar with unresolved crimes, passions and jealousies, and the uneasy moments when you know that the truth lies in a shallow grave just under a veneer of lies. As the characters, predominantly women, navigate their way through the stories, Enriquez spins a web of deceit, dark magic and fantastical scenarios to point a finger at the horror of a place imbued with violence, hypocrisy, fear and grief. Her themes do not rest easy, but the tales and the worlds she builds through metaphor and fantasy are hypnotic, taking us in, sometimes gently, often not. Teenage jealousy in 'Our Lady of The Quarry' conjures up a pack of raving dogs. In 'The Well', a young girl unwittingly becomes the vehicle, body and soul, for her mother, aunt and siblings fear of a malign spirit. So imbued with this malign force, madness is the only solution. 'The Lookout' sends a shiver down your spine — trapped in her frightening form, The Lady Upstairs is looking for a victim — someone to set her free. Each story draws you into a situation that has no easy answers, where friends are bonded by shared crises and sanity is a breath away from collapse. Yet Enriquez’s writing is succinct, beguiling and fizzes with energy — with a force that points a finger at death, at violence and corruption, and says I am not afraid. 

 

 

Author Biography: Mariana Enriquez is an award-winning Argentine novelist and journalist, whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She is the internationally acclaimed author of Things We Lost in the Fire, and her novel Our Share of the Night, which was awarded the prestigious 2019 Premio Herralde de Novela, will be published by Granta Books in 2022.

Description

'Mariana Enriquez is a mesmerizing writer who demands to be read. Like Bolano, she is interested in matters of life and death, and her fiction hits with the full force of a train' - Dave Eggers

Welcome to Buenos Aires, a city thrumming with murderous intentions and morbid desires, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses. These brilliant, unsettling tales of revenge, witchcraft, fetishes, disappearances and urban madness spill over with women and girls whose dark inclinations will lead them over the edge.

'After you've lived in Enriquez's marvellous brain for the time it takes to read THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED, the known world feels ratcheted a few degrees off-centre. Mariana Enriquez's stories are smoky, carnal and dazzling' - Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies


Review: 'A weird and wonderful exploration of contemporary horror - cities falling apart, society turning on itself, the loneliness of the internet age - stories from that compelling space between grimy, crushing reality and nightmare. But more than that: these stories are fun. Wild, triggering, sinister, button-pushing fun' - Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies

'After you've lived in Enriquez's marvellous brain for the time it takes to read THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED, the known world feels ratcheted a few degrees off-centre. Mariana Enriquez's stories are smoky, carnal and dazzling' - Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

Awards

Shortlisted Booker International 2021