Argentinian writer Mariana Enríquez’s first book to appear in English, translated by Megan McDowell, is gruesome, violent, upsetting – and bright with brilliance. The stories are filled with people experiencing bodily trauma, often self‑inflicted.
A schoolgirl yanks out her fingernails with her teeth in response to “what the man with slicked-back hair made her do”. A boy who jumps in front of a train is obliterated so thoroughly that just his left arm remains between the tracks, “like a greeting or message”. In the title story, women begin to set fire to themselves in response to male violence. The relentless grotesquerie avoids becoming kitsch by remaining grounded in its setting: a modern Argentina still coming to terms with decades of violent dictatorship.
The effect is so immersive that the details begin to feel like the reader’s own nightmares. The stories here are not formally connected but together they create a sensibility as distinctive as that found in Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son or Daisy Johnson’s Fen. They are a portrait of a world in fragments, a mirrorball made of razor blades.
• Things We Lost in the Fire, translated by Megan McDowell, is published by Portobello. To order a copy for £11.17 (RRP £12.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
