Genre: Horror, Literary Fiction
Author: Mariana Enriquez
Translator: Megan McDowell
Year published: 2023 (English translation)
TWs: SA, torture, body horror, abuse, violence, death
Rating: 4.5/5
If you’ve been following along with my Argentine reads this month, you’ll know by now that the country does not do gentle fiction. But even though Argentina has already given us some genuinely dark and disturbing work, ‘Our Share of Night’ is in a league of its own. This is Mariana Enriquez going full throttle for 600 pages and honestly? It earns every single one of them.
Enriquez is probably already on your radar. Her short story collections ‘Things We Lost in the Fire’ and ‘The Dangers of Smoking in Bed’ made her one of the most exciting authors in contemporary horror. In my opinion, though, ‘Our Share of Night’ is the novel that really shows you what she’s capable of.
‘In Argentina, they toss bodies at you.’
Synopsis (always spoiler-free)
A woman’s mysterious death sends her husband and son on a road trip across Argentina. Their destination is her ancestral home, but what awaits them there is far from comfort. Rosario’s family, the Order, is a wealthy and powerful cult that commits unspeakable acts in pursuit of one thing: immortality.
For Gaspar, the son, the Order insists this is his destiny. As they close in, he and his father take flight, trying to outrun a clan that will stop at nothing to ensure its own survival. But how far will a father go to protect his child? And can anyone really escape their fate?
Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, ‘Our Share of Night’ is a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult, and a book about love and longing in its most desperate forms.
‘The dead travel fast.’
My Thoughts
I want to start with what made this book genuinely exceptional for me, because I think it’s easy to get distracted by the scale of it and miss what’s actually doing the heavy lifting.
At its core, ‘Our Share of Night’ is a novel about a father trying to protect his son from forces that are bigger, older, and more powerful than both of them. There is something in that relationship between Juan and Gaspar that is just devastating to read. Juan is not an easy character to love. He’s closed off, sometimes brutal, and the reader spends a lot of time watching him from a distance. Still, the lengths he goes to for Gaspar hit me harder than almost anything else in the book.
Then, there’s the political dimension, which is where I think ‘Our Share of Night’ really elevates itself above most horror fiction. The novel is set largely during Argentina’s Dirty War, the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 80s during which tens of thousands of people were disappeared, tortured, and killed. What Enriquez does, so cleverly, is draw a direct line between that real-world horror and the fictional cult at the centre of the novel. The Order’s rituals mirror the methods of the junta: they take the poor, the marginalised, the powerless. They disappear people. They use bodies as currency. The supernatural horror and the historical horror aren’t just thematically linked, they’re the same kind of horror, just presented in a different way.
The atmosphere throughout is extraordinary. Enriquez has always been exceptional at building dread and here she has room to really let it settle. The Argentine landscape feels genuinely ominous in a way that’s hard to explain: there’s something about the heat, the dust, the provincial roads and colonial mansions that feels deeply, quietly wrong. The horror, when it comes, is visceral and I won’t pretend it’s an easy read.
If I had one criticism it’s that the sheer length of the novel means some sections land harder than others. The earlier parts, following young Juan and the origins of the Order, are jaw-droppingly good. A couple of the later sections, following secondary characters in the 90s, are slightly less gripping. They’re not bad, just not quite at the same level, but these are minor complaints about a book that is unlike almost anything else you’ll read.
If you can handle the darkness (and there is a lot of it, please check those TWs), ‘Our Share of Night’ is one of the most rewarding novels. It’s a must read for horror fans, literary fiction readers, and anyone who’s been working their way through Argentine literature and wants to understand what it can really do.
Happy Reading!
About the Author
Mariana Enriquez was born in Buenos Aires in 1973 and is a journalist, editor, and fiction writer. She has contributed to numerous Argentine newspapers and literary journals and is currently deputy editor of the culture supplement at Página/12.
Her story collection ‘The Dangers of Smoking in Bed’ was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the Kirkus Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction. ‘Our Share of Night’ won the prestigious Premio Herralde in 2019 and was named one of the ten best novels of 2023 by both The Atlantic and Time magazine.
Find more on her Goodreads page!
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