In a 2018 Lithub essay, the Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez talks about having to invent horror for herself because there was no Latin American tradition to draw inspiration from. If true (and I can only trust her words), it makes her writings about hauntings and horrors all the more unusual. Different cultures worship different gods and fear different monsters. They call them by different names. Enriquez weaves horror into everyday Argentine life, forcing two worlds – the real and the supernatural-- to coexist. The arcane becomes the shabby furniture in the rooms through which her characters move. This is illustrated when Gaspar, the young hero of her latest release and first novel available in English, asks to look through the books in his father’s library on the occult. Flipping through the pages, he discovers what anyone who has dabbled in Tarot or astrology already knows: the occult, like any esoteric scholarly study, is boring.
Gaspar opened the book randomly. Page 44 had a drawing of a six-pointed star, a little similar to the Star of David. He read: “this is why material elements which are analogous to divine elements are thought of as four, are explained by two, and only exist in the end as three. Revelation is the duality; all verbs are twofold and suppose two.” I don’t understand a thing, he thought… He looked curiously at his father, who smiled at him again without mockery, but with a certain sadness.
Stripped to its bones, Our Share of Night is a father-son story. Juan is a medium — tall, blond, and gaunt (a young Bowie). He was born with a heart condition and sold as a child to a powerful international cult, the Order, when his medical treatments became too expensive for his family to pay. In return for their keeping him alive, Juan acts as a conduit for the Order’s god, the Darkness, an entity that manifests as a black cloud with sharp edges. When inhabited by the Darkness, Juan grows gold claws that scar, rake, and amputate the Chosen. The Darkness speaks through him, revealing secrets that are the source of the group’s wealth and influence. We eventually learn that he is not the first medium found by the Order, but he has survived the longest and is by far the best treated.
Juan marries Rosario, the daughter of one of the founding families who call themselves the Blood. She has no powers but still hopes to lead the Order one day. Together, they have a son they name Gaspar. Juan’s quest to hide Gaspar’s abilities propels the plot. The Order intends to claim Gaspar as their new medium or (if the boy does not inherit his father’s powers) have Juan transfer his consciousness into Gaspar’s body. Because, like any cult worthy of their flowy robes, the ultimate goal of the Order’s members, who already possess incredible wealth, is immortality. Rosario is dead when the book opens, and Juan is unable to contact her spirit. Gaspar is still a very young child. Grieving, he and his father go on a road trip to Rosario’s family home – also home to the Place of Power, where the ritual summonings are held – in search of answers.
Juan is determined to protect Gaspar by any means necessary, and it is that willingness to use “any means” that creates tension. To that end, he enlists Rosario, her illegitimate half-sister Tali, and Stephan/Estaban, another child of the Blood. They are all active members of the Order and devoted to Juan. The circle’s morality matrix is fluid, as is their sexuality. So it makes disturbing sense that Juan is moody, mercurial, and abusive towards the son he loves above all else. Enriquez never takes up the question of the nature of the Darkness – whether it is good or evil. Juan isn’t protecting his son from it but from those who wish to use the boy for their own ends.*
When Juan finally let go of him, Gaspar closed his eyes, but a slap in the face woke him up from his faint. His father, now kneeling, was looking at him with unfocused, transparent eyes. His chin was smeared with blood and his lips were red. He didn’t seem to be alone. It seemed like there were people moving in the shadows behind him.
“Go now, Run!”
Gaspar didn’t understand, and Juan dragged him down the stairs by his good arm and pushed him toward the door. He opened it and shoved him out and closed and locked the door, all without a word. Please, Dad, Gaspar said in a quiet voice, and then he looked down at his pants, covered in urine and blood, and his mangled forearm.
And yet, the Darkness is not an entirely unknown quantity. In addition to summoning it, Juan finds and opens gateways into the Other Place from whence the Darkness comes. We learn that the Darkness is a collector. The Other Place is a mouth. Juan can cross over, bringing companions with him. So, eventually, can his son. When Gaspar unwittingly leads his friends to a door into the Other Place, two, Victoria and Pablo, leave with gifts. Another friend does not. Fans of Enriquez will remember the episode as a drastic re-writing of “Adela’s House,” a short story collected in Enriquez’s Things We Lost In the Fire.
If you’ve been reading translated literature as long as I have, you recognize the name Megan McDowell as indicative of quality storytelling and prose. Despite a recent brutal takedown in The Guardian, the writing in Our Share of Night is fine. It is a deftly constructed genre novel that fulfills its author’s vision. Enriquez isn’t attempting to be the next Borges or Cortázar. Her prose, storytelling, and world-building pay homage to Stephen King, Clive Barker, and all the masters of late 20th-century horror whose thick paperback novels could be discovered on the shelves of Waldenbooks in the late ’80s and ’90s.
The best reason to read this book is to experience the eerie little pocket world Enriquez has not so much created as designed. She jumps around the timeline, starting in the 1980s, flashing back to London in the 60s & 70s (narrated by Rosario, it is by far the best part), and finishing in the 1990s with Gaspar and his friends. We enter the world of the novel through multiple points of view. Knowledge of events is sequestered and compartmentalized among the different players, some of whom have only walk-on roles. So that the reader always has more information than any given character (except, perhaps, Juan). In this way, Enriquez has given us a book of loose threads and unexplained outcomes.
Her two previous books available in English are both short story collections – wonderfully creepy but encapsulated. So, it’s not surprising to see her luxuriate in the extra pages the novel affords her, using them to work out the environmental minutiae and reorganize our mundane world to accommodate her version of the paranormal. Unfortunately, it’s the rare author who can write 585 pages without the plot dragging at times. Throwaway characters come and go, many initially appearing significant whose stories come to nothing. I liken the landscape of Our Share of Night to a video game populated with non-player characters (NPCs). They are there for the reader to interact with; they contribute ambiance, but their impact on overall events is negligible. Enriquez has given these people names and, one suspects, extensive backstories we are not privy to. I’m specifically thinking of the children of the Order, insouciant nepo babies of the Blood, who dabble in magic with bored indifference. Many disappear because they are killed, but some because it seems as if Enriquez has lost track of them. Specifically, Tali comes to mind. As do the unresolved fates of Gaspar’s friend, Adela, and his mother, Rosaria.
But these disappearances, stories cut short inexplicably and abruptly, have a purpose. Enriquez is giving her readers a sense of what it is not to know and still go on: absence without closure. The best horror stories prey on real-life fears. And so, the Order exists in the same timeline as Argentine’s Dirty War, the period between 1974 and 1983 when 30,000 people were killed or disappeared. (Part of “Operation Condor”). In Argentina, the missing are referred to as “los desaparecidos.”
Our Share of Night places these historical horrors alongside fictional ones. And, really, it’s not that big of a leap of the imagination. What is more convenient for an affluent cult of the global elite in need of human sacrifices than a government-sponsored terrorist organization that kills innocent civilians and dumps the bodies into unmarked mass graves? It’s a strange thing to ask and consider. But answering that question provides a dark, thought-provoking, and surprisingly (disturbingly) frothy reading experience.
*There’s an inconsistency in the Order’s conclusions regarding the treatment of mediums, who are finite resources and, as Juan proves, most successful when allowed at least the illusion of freedom. Cruelty, their fallback mode, doesn’t work as well - the results are always tainted. The implication is that the Blood wants to inflict cruelty despite claiming it is what the Darkness asks. But, according to Juan, the Darkness “didn’t ask for anything.”
Books I mention (and some I do not):
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell. New York: Hogarth Press, 2023. 588 pages.
Things We Lost In the Fire by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell. New York: Hogarth Press, 2018. 208 pages.
Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell. New York: Riverhead Books, 2017. 192 pages.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. New York: Del Rey, 2020. 320 pages.
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas. New York: Berkley Books, 2023. 384 pages.