Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the watertank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women-these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.
Scorching ... I begged my family’s pardon multiple times while reading, gasps escaping from my mouth. The horror in Enriquez’s work is never gratuitous ... Maintains an intimate, sisterly relationship with horror. It is close and familiar; we touch its skin casually, nearly lovingly ... Enriquez illuminates both the night and the ghosts, and she rejects her characters’ paralysis. She refuses silence and crafts stories so searing they cannot be buried or ignored.
Striking ... Entertaining, political and exquisitely gruesome, these stories summon terror against the backdrop of everyday horrors ... Lacks the thoroughly imagined lore of Enríquez’s 600-page novel ... But Enríquez still manages to suffuse these stories with a sense of place, politics and history ... Engrossing ... Strange and mesmerizing.
Enríquez unflinchingly regards the pain of others ... Feels as vivid and essential as Kafka’s tales. Considered by many to be a Nobel contender, Enríquez is surely on a path to Stockholm.
