Our Share of Night (2023) by Mariana Enriquez

Book Review

Our Share of Night (2023)

by Mariana Enriquez

  Argentinian author Mariana Enriquez first showed up on my radar back in 2021 when I read her short story collection, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.  At the time I noted her ability to combine conventional short story themes you find in most literary fiction with what can only be described as "body horror."  Thus, when I saw that her new book, Our Share of Night, an occult fantasia set against the backdrop of the turmoil of mid 20th century Argentina, was the February recommendation of the Good Morning America Book Club (!) I knew I was going to have to check it out.

   I was able to snack the Audiobook- which runs a cool 30 hours- not that I minded, because Our Share of Night is equally riveting as a sprawling occultist horror novel AND as a very specific novel about the life experiences of people in 20th century Argentina (with a side trip to Carnaby street era swinging London).  From my perspective, both sides of the equation worked.  You could pick at either strand from the perspective of genre fiction or literary fiction, but the combination was quite intoxicating.  Enriquez's grasp of the particularity of 20th century occultism- her fictional "The Order"- a British-Argentinian "cult of the shadow" that traces is it's existence to a chance discovery by a pair of amateur folklorists in the wilds of 18th century Scotland could be ready equally as a metaphor for capitalism or for the international culture of literary fiction.  

  It's also familiar to anyone who knows anything about 20th century occultism- the darkness is summoned through the use of a medium, the medium give out garbled but powerful instructions on different subjects that seemingly range from the transcendent (the transmigration of consciousness from one body (older) to another (younger) body is a particular obsession, but it also sounds like the cult was given economic advice which allowed them to prosper on both sides of the Atlantic. 

   The form of the narrative is sequential, with narrative responsibilities for each member of a nuclear family unit of father, wife and son who have their own relationship to "the order" and to 20th century Argentinian history.  Anyway there can be no doubt that Our Share of Night is a banger.  The Audiobook was great I would recommend it.