Our Share of Night

I must be reading something different. Entirely too long, wants for editing. It was tedious as hell and I was seemingly never in the right frame of mind to read it even after sitting down expressly to read. So disappointing because I wanted to love it. I'll try her short fiction at some point.

It took me over a month to read but only because I enjoyed it so much and didn't want it to end. and I think it may already be in the running for my top read of the year. The prose was beautiful, intriguing and propellant. I never wanted to stop reading. The story and the magic and mystery was so engrossing and insanely creepy. I felt lots of emotions throughout the book. Anger and sadness and goosebumps and shock and even some cringing (in a good way) from the description of some body torture and gore. Ahhhh it was just such a unique book and I'm sad it's over and don't know if I'll ever read something like it again.

I loved every single page of this fucking massive book and its heartfelt embracing of all things occult and strange. Mariana Enriquez approaches magical realism in the same way that Toni Morrison does: with a completely straight face. No winking from the sidelines, no nudging reminders that we're experiencing the ‘other', or that everything may not be as it seems. This is quite simply reality: blood soaked, ceremonial, and dark, dark, dark, not quite separate from our own but just a little out of step, like viewing a Magic Eye picture of the exact moment of your death. Her spiralling narrative is unbelievably deft, and requires your trust in a way that I've never encountered in fiction before, almost as if you're required to give something of yourself over to Enriquez in exchange for prose. If you're lucky you'll get it back.

Reminiscent of the visceral horror of Poppy Z. Brite, with the scope and scale of Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing. Keeping everything crossed that more of her work is translated into English sooner rather than later.