The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

Mariana Enríquez gives us a collection of short horror stories from Buenos Aires, Argentina with The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Mariana uses elements of her culture and her city in general as tools to create some of the most tense eerie horror I’ve read in a long time.

I m not Argentine but I am Cuban who grew up in Miami. I remember hearing the stories of dolls hanging from trees and then seeing them, the infamous piles of oranges in between trees and how we were told to turn the other way if we saw them and leave, and the lady’s in white and the potentials of the music from the Haitian band; how I would make sure not to even give the impression to the spirits that I was dancing.

This collection brought back the nightmares from my show more youth and made me realize I’m still pretty fucking scared of those things. Those abuelas know how to put the fear of anything in you, and apparently so does Mariana Enriquez. She’s gonna be one hell of an abuela one day.

These stories had me closing my book at night to save it in the morning. I would tell myself it was because I’m tired but really I was just scared of the shadows I started seeing from fear. I had to close the book while I was eating cause I almost threw up. I love that she never gave us too much. She built up the tension and fear and then closed the story, she never dragged it on.

I stopped reading horror a while ago because nothing really scared me. But this! I was terrified, disgusted, and scared. This was amazing. show less

A girl accidentally unearths the bones of a dead relative and is haunted by the encounter throughout her life. Three young women plot to destroy an older friend in a jealous fit using supernatural forces. The putrid scent of abused and abandoned children overwhelms the residents who live in that part of the city. A girl with a fetish for the workings of the human heart takes her obsession to dangerous levels. Two young fans of a rock star who has killed himself in a gruesome manner go to extreme lengths to remain close to him. A woman who keeps public records on disappeared children is deeply affected when one of the missing girls suddenly reappears. Five young women try to contact the dead spirits of friends and relatives who have been show more “disappeared” by the government and meet with chilling results.

Those are some of the topics that Argentine writer and journalist Mariana Enriquez develops in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, a collection of twelve short stories that explore supernatural themes with a social conscience. Similar to the author’s previously translated collection Things We Lost in the Fire, this volume is set mostly in the impoverished barrios of Buenos Aires and told from the perspective of a series of sad, lonely, or disturbed female protagonists. The comparison between the two collections is interesting because while the English language version of Dangers comes out four years after the first book, it was originally written several years earlier. That distinction is important because this volume seemed, on the whole, to be the more embryonic and less assured of the two.

To be sure, Enriquez is a very talented storyteller as well as someone who is deeply committed to exploring the grittier side of life with fantastical and magical realism elements. The best stories in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed—and, for me, those included ‘Our Lady of the Quarry’, ‘Rambla Triste’, ‘Kids Who Come Back’ (which is also by far the longest), and ‘Back When We Talked to the Dead’—were the ones in which the history of political strife in her native Argentina is always just beneath the surface (even though ‘Rambla Triste’ is actually set in Barcelona). Conversely, some of the other tales, including the title story, were far sketchier and more easily forgotten. Nevertheless, this is a book that I can easily recommend to fans of the author, although those new to her work might want to start with Things We Lost in the Fire instead. show less

Enriquez mixes the underbelly of Burnos Aires with the paranormal to create something truly unique and horrifying. While a shorter book with short stories each one feels like a gut punch. These are mundane lives that are upended by spirits, intrusive thoughts, family betrayals and lies. While this book leaves you feeling like you have a film of grime on you, you’ll be happy to have read something truly carnal.

‘’Or she’d hear a rooster crow in the middle of the night and remember - but who had told her? that at that hour of the night a rooster’s crow was a sign that someone was going to die.’’

Mariana Enriquez’s stories are merciless. They are brutal, raw, savage. They haunt you, they violate your mind and your soul. They are full of terrors, despair, obsession. Ghosts are desperate. Humans are cruel. Teenage dreams are burnt, children are threatened, women and men find themselves in limbo. This is the marriage of the macabre, the lyrical, the violent. This is a cry and a howl. A dance of demons staring into our souls. And it is magnificent.

Angelita Unearthed: When a young girl discovers a few small bones in her grandma’s show more backyard, she has no idea that a very persistent baby ghost has been unearthed. A very creepy, yet tender story.

Our Lady of the Quarry: A story of obsession, deadly jealousy and witchcraft. Eerie, visceral, sad.

The Cart: When a homeless man is horribly mistreated by the residents of a small neighbourhood, a terrible curse falls on their heads.

The Well: A girl destroys her life through her obsession with curses, spells and omens. A tragic story, rich in South American Folklore. Brilliant!

Rambla Triste: I don’t want to comment on this story. It painted Barcelona and its tourists in terrible colours and the children’s ghosts subplot didn’t really work for me.

The Lookout: The Lady Upstairs resides in an old hotel in a seaside town that is a magnet for tourists. The Lady Upstairs doesn’t care about them. The Lady Upstairs has been searching for the One and Elina, haunted by a nightmarish past, seems the perfect candidate. You will remember this story for a long time…

Where Are You, Dear Heart?:A young woman falls desperately in love with the beating of hearts. A terrifying combination of pleasure and pain, a story that is raw, sensual and lyrical.

Meat: A rock star’s suicide drives two dedicated fans to commit heinous actions in order to ‘’keep’’ him with them forever. Αn extraordinary story of devotion, obsession and sheer madness.

No Birthdays or Baptisms: A strange film-maker records videos requested by people whose motives range from shady to downright criminal. When a mother asks him to record her daughter who is plagued by a dark presence, he will need to reconsider his ‘’vocation’’. I don’t know how to describe this story. It was extremely bleak, violent even but it is one that has stuck in my mind ever since.

Kids Who Come Back: A young woman who works in the social services responsible for the cases of missing children becomes personally involved in the case of a teenage girl and the strange circumstances of her disappearance. And then, missing children start coming back as if time had frozen for them.

The Dangers of Smoking In Bed: The sad thoughts of a lonely woman prompted by a sudden death and a nocturnal butterfly.

Back When We Talked to the Dead: The silly game with an Ouija board goes horribly wrong for a girl who desperately searches for her missing parents.

If Mariana Enriquez doesn’t win the International Booker Prize (which will probably happen since everything is about promotions and politics these days…), I shall be mad to the High Heavens…

‘’Yes, desperate people stayed at the hotel. Yes, she’d heard them mutter death wishes and she’d bestowed on them dreams of terrible childhoods and forgotten pain. But none had been ready. And it was a lie that time didn’t pass for being like her. She was tired. She longed for each summer to be the last, and she spent more and more time in the lookout tower, where she could barely hear the whisper of the living, which she knew how to imitate so weill, but could not comprehend.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less

So this was a wonderful surprise. I've liked the translator, Megan McDowell's choices of books to translate in the past and when this one showed up on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize, I thought it looked interesting enough, and boy, was it. This is a collection of horror short stories that are thought-provoking and odd. In the opening story, a woman is haunted by a decomposing baby, which pretty much sets the tone for the book. If you are a fan of Samanta Schweblin, were an emo kid, or just like weird and off-beat stories, then you'll love this.

Disturbing Shorts
Review of the Hogarth Press hardcover edition (2021) translated from the Spanish language original "Los peligros de fumar en la cama" (2009)

When I say "disturbing", I mean more along the lines of repulsive, icky and gross, rather than haunting, mystifying and mesmerizing. I had especially enjoyed Enriquez first English language translation "Things We Lost in the Fire" (2016/2017), especially for its Lovecraftian allusions and endings. This latest collection is translated from an earlier 2009 work and seems too often to go for gross-out effects such as defecation to shock the reader.

I did find the novella-length story Kids Who Came Back to be the best work in the collection, with the horror of its en masse The Monkey's show more Paw-like returns of the disappeared children of Buenos Aires. That one was haunting, atmospheric and effective, though still disturbing. The rest were entirely forgettable for me.

This is surprisingly on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize 2021. I haven't read any of the others, but would still be shocked if one them didn't win over this one. show less

I read Enriquez's Things We Lost in the Fire when it first came out, and fell in love with her haunting brand of literary stories. When I finished the collection, I immediately searched for more...and couldn't find them.

This is Enriquez's second collection published/translated into English, but was written prior to TWLitF. I didn't realize that at first, but was glad to discover it simply because while I enjoyed most of these stories, they didn't live up to the memory of what I'd experienced in her work before. It's possible this book suffered some from me reading through all of the stories quickly, vs pacing them out, as the themes/devices got to feeling repetitive after a while, but I suspect it's simply that Enriquez grew as a writer show more between this, her first collection, and her second one.

I'd still recommend this one, particularly to writers new to her work, but it's her other collection that I really loved. Obviously, I'll remain on the lookout for more of her work. show less