Member Reviews
Thanks to NetGalley and Hogarth for this eARC!
My first exposure to Mariana's writing was reading OUR SHARE OF NIGHT, which was engrossing and a great re-introduction (for me) back to horror. I was super excited to get a chance to read this new short story collection---and it didn't disappoint! I loved this book so much that I finished reading this within a week. I'm hooked on Mariana's writing and Megan McDowell's translation was superb.
This book is going on my bookshelf as print copy when it releases!
Life's too short to read fatphobic content. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I was really excited to receive an arc of this from netgalley but unfortunately I didn't enjoy it. I love this author and enjoyed her other short story collection but I just found these slow and uninteresting, I couldn't get into them. I do think people will enjoy them, just not me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for a review copy.
A Sunny Place for Shady People is a collection of 12 short stories. All twelve are either set in or have ties to Buenos Aires. As expected, they are all creepy and beautifully written. I will say I don't understand them all after a single read and several have open endings that just make them more creepy. These sorts of stories are not my typical reading fare, but these are very much worth reading.
My Sad Dead
A charming ghost story. I think this is the least creepy of the 12.
A Sunny Place for Shady People
Anchored on the true story of Elisa Lam who was found drowned in a hotel water tank in 2013. My favourite story of the collection.
Face of Disgrace
Extremenly creepy - excellent story.
Julie
Very weird, I liked this one a lot.
Nightbirds
I think I need to read this one wihout interruptions - I think I missed something important. I have not idea whatis real in this story - which may be the point.
Metomorphosis
Very cool. Girl incorporates herself into herself.
Hyena Hymns
Very creepy - one of the stories where dange comes from found clothing.
Different Colors Made of Tears
The other clothing story - I missed something here as I don't get the ending.
The Suffering Woman
Like a ghost story but not really.
The Refrigerator Cemetery
So very creepy, very horror, not for me.
A Local Artist
High on the horror scale and low on the happy ending scale.
Black Eyes
A simpler story than the rest of the collection. I felt this had more gore and less horror.
A really strong collection in a genre outside my comfort zone.
Thank you NetGalley and Random House for this ARC.
I almost always enjoy short story anthologies, and this is no exception. The stories may not be scary, and a couple of them just do not land, but the first couple stories hit. The titular story especially - it’s very human, and a reminder that even the mundane can cause unease.
I'm tempted to go a little closer to 3.5 stars for this, but I'm ok with rounding it up to 4. I do like this collection a bit better than The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, but it suffers a bit from the same things that happen to any short story collection. Even though there are a lot of fantastic stories, there are a handful that are just ok and kind of drag it down. It's a pretty short collection, so it's not a huge deal. It's just borderline inevitable with collections. The stories I like, I really liked, though. This is horror the whole way through, and it ranges from Twilight Zone-y parable type stories to wild body horror and vampires, and it's mostly super fun. I just wanna read another full on Mariana Enriquez novel again, because Our Share of Night is for sure still her best work, but this is very fun and definitely recommended.
Perfect for fans of supernatural and horror. This collection of “things that go bump in the night” stories leaves you spine-tingling thrills from one story to the next. Though I’m usually not a fan of short collections because some stories capture you more than others, this was a solid showing by the author. Scarily delicious!
From my first read of The Dangers of Smoking In Bed, I knew that Mariana Enriquez would swiftly become one of my favorite current authors. One of the strongest current authors, especially in the short story collection department, and A Sunny Place for Shady People is just as strong as her two previous collections! If you enjoyed either, you should absolutely pick up a copy of this one!
THANK YOU TO NETGALLEY AND RANDOM HOUSE HOGARTH FOR THE E-ARC!
incredible as always. so full of creativity, emotion, love, and resistance to the norms - i love how enriquez includes sly analysis of politics and history as well.
Mariana Enriquez is one of my favorite horror authors. While I thoroughly enjoyed her recent debut novel, her short story collections hold a special place on my shelf. They have all spent time in my bag, for quick reads between train stops or while I sit for a cafe. I particularly enjoy how she blends the horror of the macabre and supernatural with the often more terrifying horrors we inflict upon our fellow men. She is a captivating storyteller, and of course, Megan McDowell is a talented translator. Needless to say, I loved this book!
Read on an ARC provided by the publisher and NetGalley, which did not influence my review.
This was was very much a Mariana Enriquez short story collection. It’s everything you expect. If you’re a short story/ horror lover it’s for you.. It’s dark and creepy and sometimes stomach churning!
You really get a good feel for Enriquez's style throughout this collection. Horror elements run through all of the stories, yes, but her voice is unique among horror writers. The stories are all interesting reads and varied. You care for the characters, even if you are with them for a short time and all are thoroughly enjoyable.
After reading, loving, and being fairly traumatized by Our Share of Night, I was excited to read more from Mariana Enríquez. I really enjoyed these stories as well. They were very atmospheric—I felt immediately engrossed in each one. In many of them, Enríquez introduces the paranormal, macabre elements as something unsurprising to her protagonists, regardless of how upsetting they’re likely to be for readers. The Suffering Woman was a highlight for me; it felt like it spoke to the pain of observing and consuming the world’s pain online, in real time. I also really enjoyed the titular story, A Sunny Place for Shady People. If I have critiques, it’s that many of the stories feel like they end quite abruptly (which to some extent is just the nature of a short story collection) and that a couple of the stories felt somewhat reminiscent of other work I’ve viewed or read: A Local Artist reminded me a lot of Midsommar, and Night Birds felt a lot like Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Regardless, I’d highly recommend this collection and definitely see myself revisiting many of the stories again.
We live in a crazy world, all of us, together. It's a place of both sun and shade, and though there is that sunny, glorious, incredibly beautiful "sun" part of the equation, it's the shade, yeah. Still there. Always there.
The best, most magical solution, the solution to keep us grounded and together: stories. We all have stories. More so, we all need stories.
Stories in search of more pain and death, stories about unasked for burdens and the weight of carrying them, stories about trauma passed down, stories about evil itself, stories about feelings we have no words for. All of these and more: we need them.
Stories nurture us. They keep us connected and brimming with life, brimming with that "sun" that's always poking around a shady spot.
Fin the stories, find the sun. Find A sunny Place for Shady People.
Another 5 star Mariana Enriquez publication! This collection of stories was perfect! My emotions were all over the place, and I loved it! I would recommend this to anyone who will listen, 5 stars!!
This was a solid collection of short stories that embodied dark, macabre, fanatical, and somber themes. Enriquez touches on relatable themes such as lingering grief, regret, shame, paranoia, and victim blaming. Those speak to the humanity of the protagonists-even when the paranormal plays a role. She also writes stories that bring to life the supernatural, and things that go bump in the night. My personal favorite was the last story, Black Eyes. Even though it doesn’t explicitly say, it gives off strong vampiric vibes and hits all the right horror notes.
While this collection isn’t strictly horror in the traditional sense, it still provides stories of dread, sadness, and peculiarity. It would be one I would recommend.
I went into reading this with no expectations whatsoever, as it was my first of Mariana Enríquez's books, but wow. This collection of short stories kept me wanting more. They were haunting, disgusting, beautiful, and I was fully immersed. "Metamorphis", was my absolute favorite story of all. I would 10/10 recommend this book to anyone, that has a relatively strong stomach. I cannot wait to read "the Dangers of Smoking in Bed" after this.
I had heard many good things about the other fiction collections written by Mariana Enriquez, but this is my first experience reading any of her work. While I’m definitely grateful to have gotten access to this ARC, I’m thinking that maybe I should have started with the others.
The title story is fiction but it is also about the very real death of Elisa Lam and every detail of her case is handled pretty insensitively and in poor taste. She’s practically laid out like a carnival exhibit, something freakish to be gawked at. I think the narrator of the story is supposed to be shitty, but in my mind this doesn’t give Enriquez a free pass. It just felt kind of uncomfortable. She could’ve easily borrowed a few details from reality and changed the character’s
name and the story would’ve been similar. (Perhaps it was meant to be a tribute? But why be so disrespectful?)
There’s another story later on, about a woman who is haunted by a stranger that died of a chronic illness. This was another one that seemed to be a little bit iffy and I couldn’t figure out what she was trying to accomplish with it, aside from using the symptoms of Cancer as body horror. It was sad and it was upsetting and I didn’t enjoy reading it. (Though perhaps that was the point.) I think it had something to do with questioning your own mortality, but there are plenty of other ways to address this.
Something I’ve noticed about her writing style is that it feels disjointed. Enriquez doesn’t stay on topic and the narration often feels like someone telling you a story that moves quickly from one topic to another in a somewhat confusing manner. (Think large, unbroken paragraphs.) I had some difficulty staying focused and following the plot threads. She’s also quite good at writing characters that I would like to push down a flight of stairs, “Death Becomes Her” style. (Not necessarily a bad thing.)
I want to be clear that my reaction is not all negative. Little moments of clever metaphor were peppered throughout, along with an eerie scare or disgusting body horror moment that landed effectively. And there were two stories that stood out above the rest for me as 5-star reads:
“Face of Disgrace” is legit horrifying and sad. It’s also a really beautiful and tragic representation of generational trauma. (And I liked the specific horror references as well.) This was the story that fully made me see the author’s skill.
“Different Colors Made of Tears” is also really good. A great concept and despite its uglier moments I thought that both the metaphors and the blatant imagery were crafted effectively.
There was another story I was pretty fond of called “A Local Artist” that was just the right flavor of unsettling and bizarre but I wanted a bit more from the ending.
I’m giving the collection a 3.5 because of those three stories. I would love to read more like those. I’m still planning to seek out more from Enriquez even though this collection didn’t hit as hard for me as I wanted it to. (Please also note the extremely lengthy trigger warnings, if that’s your thing!)
Thank you to Netgalley and to the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own.
TW: Chronic Illness, Graphic descriptions of real life true crime victim, Substance Abuse, Sexual Assault, Suicide, Domestic Abuse, Fat shaming, Mention of Disordered Eating, Animal death (graphic), Homophobia/Hate Speech, Mention of Holocaust, Mention of Abortion
I'm someone who often has a hard time with short stories because there's not a lot of room for character development or scene-setting, but Enríquez is a writer who always manages to establish a sense of voice, place, and mood within a few paragraphs. This collection of short stories takes the reader through a spectrum of narrators and settings and experiences both real and paranormal. We meet ghosts, addicts, monsters and those who would be monstrous, sons and daughters and mothers and lovers and all their secrets, and people yearning for transformation, for love, for mercy or absolution.
For the most part, I found the stories to be rather uneven; they almost always halt at the edge of an open wound: a moment poised on the precipice of disaster, either awaiting further horrors or trying to leave the terror behind. Very few feel hopeful (“Metamorphosis” is a notable exception), which perhaps reflects Enríquez’s outlook on contemporary life in Argentina. And while there is plenty of the body horror and societal dread that make Enríquez’s writing so compelling, those hard-hitting moments and passages felt a bit isolated due to the shorter story lengths and abrupt nature of a lot of the endings.
When I first finished this collection a month ago, I didn’t know if many of the stories would stick with me, but even now I do still find myself thinking about the first three quite a bit:
• “My Sad Dead” - as the opener, this felt more like a meditation on the nature of ghosts, and I found myself pretty emotionally invested in it.
• “A Sunny Place for Shady People” - it’s interesting to me that the title story is the only one that takes place outside Argentina, and although I didn’t really connect with the protagonist, the grief in this story was palpable
• “Face of Disgrace” - the POV shift after the first section was a little clunky, but the spiral into body horror was masterful
Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.
I am someone who doesn’t really like story collections but I’ve heard great things about this authors past releases so I was very excited to receive an e-arc of this from NetGally. I had the best time with this collection, it’s scary and heartbreaking and left me wanting to read more from Mariana Enriquez. I loved the concept of normal women living normal lives until one day they experience something horrific or supernatural that changes everything. The writing is beautiful and addictive, even though it was stories I found myself having a hard time putting it down because I wanted to see what world she would throw me into next. I will be reading Mariana’s backlog asap and picking this up for a re read on publication day!
Thank you NetGally and the publishers for the advice copy in exchange for my honest feedback.