Deep in the heart of the Argentine jungle, the remnants of a black magic cult called the Order are obsessed with the quest for eternal life. To achieve that goal, they must have a person who can serve as a conduit between this world and the evil Darkness that may grant their immortality. The Order is vicious in finding and controlling anyone with the gift to be a medium, but functioning in that role is almost certainly a quick death sentence. Juan, the current medium who was raised by the Order from childhood, has seen his powers fade recently and is desperate to keep the cult from turning to his young son Gaspar as his replacement. Rosario, Juan’s wife and Gaspar’s mother, has been killed under mysterious circumstances and Juan suspects she was murdered by her own family, themselves leading figures in the Order. Can Gaspar be saved to lead a normal life or will he be conscripted to serve the Order’s nefarious purposes?

That is the essential tale told in Our Share of Night, Mariana Enríquez’ first full-length novel to be translated into English after two remarkable collections of short fiction (The Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed). That publishing history is useful to understand because, at their best, the author’s short stories are unsettling and effective combinations of gritty urban realism, gothic horror elements, and pointed commentary on the political situation in her country. Creating such a combination is what appears to have been the intention here as well; think of crossing the horror fiction of Stephen King with the politically based, multi-generational family sagas of Isabelle Allende and you will have a good idea of what this novel tries to be. For all its craft and imagination, though, those parts did not really come together as convincingly in this book of more than 600 pages as they do in a 15- or 20-page short story.

Indeed, the sheer length of this novel might be its biggest drawback. The world that Enríquez creates is certainly dramatic and well-drawn, but the occurrences of outright horror were spread out way too far to be emotionally effective, although an impending sense of doom was always present. For me, the family story also fell a little flat in that two of the main protagonists—Rosario and Juan—are essentially out of the picture by about halfway through the story, which left far too much time to learn how Gaspar navigates his joyless teenage years with his small circle of friends and the uncle who adopts him. Finally, other than some occasional references to people who “disappeared” and Argentina’s economic struggles, the political critique remained largely in the background. In all, this felt like a story that could have been told in hundreds of fewer pages. So, while Our Share of Night still merits a mild recommendation, readers new to this talented author’s work might do better to start with her short fiction instead.

Loved Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez and the stunning translatin by Megan McDowell.

Super scary, dark, engaging but wow what an adventure.
This book deals in a whole lot of fantasy and occult and not nearly enough family drama in my opinion. I had a feeling that would be the case when I started the story and I was not surprised but I would have like a bit more of the family story and a bit less occult.

Regardless, this is good book if you are in the right frame of mind. Hard hitting and dark but what a ride.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for ARC in exchange for my reivew.

“That feeling of inexplicable horror certain places provoked in him could have been caused by whatever it was the doctors and psychiatrists were struggling to name: the aftermath of trauma, epilepsy derived from the accident, some kind of mental illness…”

This novel has little resemblance to Enriquez’s short fiction. It’s straightforward storytelling, without much mystery, and without the unpredictable weirdness of her stories. The narrative is disciplined. Every word on the page has a narrative purpose. As such it was a little disappointing to me, because I’m in love with Enriquez’s inexplicable meanders and dead ends, and I'm in love with all of the open-ended questions that her short fiction poses.

The sentence above is a good example—it does the job, but there is no verve or surprise about it. Maybe Enriquez felt she needed to rein in her smoky wanderings, of girls hiding meat in mattresses, and weird baby teeth, and self-immolating women, in order to give this longer work the structure it needed to not collapse in on itself.

I wasn’t gripped.