A Sunny Place for Shady People
Stories
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre, by “Buenos Aires’s sorceress of horror” (Samanta Schweblin, The New York Times)
“Entertaining, political and exquisitely gruesome, these stories summon terror against the backdrop of everyday horrors. . . . A queen of horror delivers more delightfully twisted stories.”—Los Angeles Times
“As vivid and essential as Kafka’s tales.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND THE TELEGRAPH • A BEST HORROR BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR): NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND VULTURE
On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those birds were once women.
Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women—these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.
Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez’s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, A Sunny Place for Shady People showcases Enriquez’s unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and underscores why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The darker side of Argentina comes to life in Mariana Enriquez’s shudder-inducing collection of short stories. Whether it’s a daughter trying to quiet her deceased mother’s spirit, a gruesome flock of mistreated bird-women, or a young woman’s fate at a seedy hotel, Enriquez excels at putting a grotesque spin on everyday moments. Childhood play turns deadly and common ailments morph into body horror as she weaves in allegories of today’s pressing social issues. Her lyrical prose plays off her grotesque images, and her turns of phrase can make even horrible characters relatable—while her descriptions of Argentina pull us into the beauty and decay of her home country. Immerse yourself in a dozen skin-crawling supernatural stories filled with eerie images and gut-churning horror, perfect for a deliciously creepy night on your own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Enriquez (The Dangers of Smoking in Bed) offers a masterful collection full of grotesque body horror, red-hot terror, and mysterious events, revealing the pain and loss endured by women in modern-day Buenos Aires. In "My Sad Dead," Emma, a doctor, is routinely visited by the ghost of her mother, who died from cancer, and the ghosts of three teenage girls who died in a recent drive-by shooting. For Emma, the apparitions amount to a veritable "ghost pandemic," caused in part by her neighborhood's uptick in violence, where there's "more money in crime than in lawful work." In "Face of Disgrace," the narrator tells of how his mother suffered from a dreadful disorder where her facial features began disappearing years after she was raped by a faceless man, and the erasure is passed down through the generations. "Metamorphosis" portrays a perimenopausal woman lamenting her body's transformation ("No one tells you, there's no warning. Your skin dries out, the fat builds up on your hips and legs, and the cellulite deepens from one day to the next"). She has a fibroid removed during her hysterectomy, and later has it implanted on her spine to restore her sense of feeling complete in her body. Enriquez's stories gain their power through surprise, as they often begin with a realistic setting before taking a terrifying or unsettling swerve, and she brilliantly explores themes of guilt, shame, and vanity. These provocative tales are first-rate literary horror.
