![]() ![]() ![]() “When I make horror,” Enríquez said in a recent interview, “I try to make it Latin American. While much of horror’s subject matter is universal – a fear of spiders, or being pursued, or, of course, death – it’s often the culturally specific elements that make it memorable: think of the Middle English folk song at the climax of The Wicker Man, or the American high school prom as the venue for revenge in Stephen King’s Carrie. ![]() If you want to wince, flinch, and momentarily panic when you switch on a light, this is a book for you. It isn’t quite as strong as the other, but it does contain a handful of brilliantly unsettling stories. This is the second collection of hers to be translated into English by Megan McDowell, following 2017’s Things We Lost in the Fire, but in fact The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is the older of the two, having first appeared in Argentina in 2009. Enríquez, who is from Buenos Aires and sets most of her stories there, operates on the boggy ground between recognisable daily life and the dark-running streams of fear, rational and irrational, we all have inside us. ![]()
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