Our Share of Night, A Bloody Pleasure: a book review
I swam through Our Share of Night, charting my way through Mariana Enriquez’s crimson ocean with a map of senses. Smelling my way through blood, sex, salt, rot, and flowers. Feeling my way through fistfuls of eyelids and the jungle graze of waxy, green leaves. She led me down a path that managed to twist away from the over-simplisticity (and falsehood) of good and evil - and she did so vividly, scattering the seeds of a fine literary hand as she went.
First, Enriquez provides the reader with a gateway into her ripe world of darkness through preternatural imagery. And then she goes beyond, delivering you into the minds and sensations of the characters. You feel the cutting, the shivering, the fleshiness. The oppressive heat that shapes the story drips down your back. And by establishing an almost nonmoral tone, the author allows the imagery to lead the reader by the hand, lending an aesthetic reading to the choices and consequences accepted by the characters, rather than a critical one. This is life - complex and juicy - and the story is immersed in it, free of a moral framework.
The most obviously outstanding aspect of the work was the cult of characters. Enriquez sculpted unique, compelling portraits - refined, devoted villains and doomed, defective heroes - from fertile soil. The characterization and development of one of the primary characters, Juan, was a pleasure to take in. He remained alluring, intricate - almost admirable - despite a violent nature and piercing coldness. The beauty in Enriquez’s characterization is more thrilling still due to the plain fact that unique characters are rare in this literary world. It’s not a tragedy - it’s actually totally fine. A lack for fresh characters doesn’t take away from my general (blissful) reading experience. And the skill with which authors reshape and carefully resuscitate recycled characters, who are often true to life, creates brilliant stories and often brilliant characters despite their trope-i-ness. Nonetheless, it is totally dreamy to run into someone new. And there is a generous handful of new someones in this novel, Juan being just one.
The language that Enriquez employed was masterful. We could liken it to embroidery or music, something ancient, deep, and layered - as colorful and songful as an Argentenian aviary. At times, it was clear why the writing was so good (my god - that word pairing!), while at other times it wasn’t, which is another of my favorite literary treats. It’s that neat trick when the writing is arrestingly good and you can’t manage to uncover why, or how. The phantom skillfulness of a very good author is a ride I’m always happy to tag along for. Even as someone immersed in the process myself, I don’t care for a look behind the curtain. Tie a scarf over my eyes and feed me ripe language. Please. I won’t ask questions.
A delightful balance of darkness and (!) fun, Our Share of Night took my scorpio-ascending heart on a flight to a rich land where attitudes toward life and death leave puritanical constructs behind and replace them with the lushness of life and the sanctity of embracing it whole. Blood sacrifices for San La Muerte in chapels cast with shadows of pagan transformation in candlelight, rueful tarot readings, and crumbling houses holding portals to the hungry mouth of darkness, all interweave into a stunning story that is the curtain itself, sometimes heavy, velvet, stale with the smell of cigarettes, sometimes sheer and light as ashes on the breeze.
Thank you, Mariana Enriquez. It was a bloody pleasure.