A thought provoking, compelling, and engaging collection of short gothic and horror stories by the marvellously imaginative Mariana Enriquez. The stories comprise of:

My Sad Dead
A Sunny Place for Shady People
Face of Disgrace
Julie
Night Birds
Metamorphosis
Hyena Hymns
Different Colors Made of Tears
The Suffering Woman
The Refrigerator Cemetery
A Local Artist
Black Eyes

The profoundly unsettling, violent, gruesome and disturbing stories are emotive and atmospheric, speaking of more than one type of monsters and legends, whilst simultaneously providing a social and political commentary. There is a focus on Argentina's history, social class, inequality, cities and rural locations, on those who reside on the margins of society, spiritualists, and the supernatural, and be prepared for ambiguous conclusions. Some of the subjects, ideas, and themes of these stories will feel familiar to readers who have read her previous works, so perhaps they may not feel as innovative, but for readers new to the author, this collection provides a brilliant introduction to her captivating dark, intense, visionary, smart, insightful and exquisite storytelling.

This short story collection is likely to appeal to a wide range of readers, but I would particularly recommend it to those who have yet to encounter the talented Enriquez. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

"A Sunny Place for Shady People" by Mariana Enriquez is an extraordinary literary achievement that captivates with its blend of the macabre and the profound. Enriquez's storytelling is nothing short of mesmerizing; she crafts a world that is at once familiar and deeply unsettling. Her characters are vividly drawn, each with a unique voice that resonates long after the last page is turned. The atmospheric prose envelops the reader, creating a sense of place that is both haunting and evocative. Enriquez tackles complex themes with finesse, weaving narratives that are rich in emotion and insight. This book is a testament to her skill as a writer, offering a reading experience that is as thought-provoking as it is enthralling. "A Sunny Place for Shady People" is an absolute must-read for anyone seeking a novel that is both intellectually stimulating and deeply moving.

No review I write will give this justice. This lyrical and unique collection of stories made my skin crawl at points. It’s macabre and horrifying yet also human and tender. I didn’t know Latin American horror was something I needed but I need more of it now. The short stories are amazing and you should definitely read them in order as they become more and more disturbing and powerful. If gothic horror is your thing then check this out. I am now off to get everything this author has written to date. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC. This is a voluntary review of my own thoughts.

A collection of short stories that uses the mundane, routine and familiar to create extraordinary, weird, deeply unsettling narratives. As my first venture into the works of Mariana Enriquez I was utterly mesmerised.

Often set in her birthplace of Argentina, Enriquez's work offers a stark social commentary on some of the issues pervading the country, using horror to highlight and explore themes such as homelessness, addiction and domestic violence. The depth of storytelling and character building within these short stories is a feat of literary genius, compelling you from the first
chapter right until the end.

Eerie, atmospheric and beautifully human; these stories are built to captivate as much as they are to disturb with their intriguingly macabre characters and unpredictable, meandering plots. Body horror and the supernatural feature heavily throughout the works, building a visceral sense of unsease that often culminates in a fairly ambiguous ending. Though some may find this unsatisfactory, I personally enjoy being left to decipher some of the more obscure elements. Enriquez's rich use of imagery certainly arms the reader with everything they need to flesh out those parts themselves, which coincidentally (or intentionally) leaves the story lingering with you for much longer than it would had you been given a more comprehensive version of events that required no further exploration.

This was my first book by Mariana Enriquez, and I can confidently say it won’t be the last! With another of her books already waiting on my shelf and a trip planned to Saaremaa to pick up yet another, I’m fully committed. This collection of strange and gut-wrenching stories is definitely worth the effort! 😊

Enriquez has a unique ability to play on your nerves, creating an irresistible curiosity that keeps you turning the pages while simultaneously giving you goosebumps, shivers, and even slight nausea. As a big fan of dark crime novels, I thought I was prepared for anything, but this book surprised me. The cover, with its bright colors, initially seemed too friendly. However, the collage of faces and hands should have been a red flag: be prepared for horrors! Now that I know what Enriquez's style entails, I can say I thoroughly enjoy it.

These twelve stories dive into realms filled with ghosts, secrets, deaths, disfigurements, diseases, hallucinations, and other nightmare-inducing elements. Each story is meticulously crafted to evoke strong emotions and leave a lasting impact. It’s difficult to choose a favorite, but “Different Colors Made of Tears” definitely stands out. The story of donated clothes, specifically beautiful dresses filled with the previous owner's anger and cruelty, was particularly haunting. The description of the agony and pain experienced while trying them on is so vivid that it left me feeling queasy, something that hasn’t happened in a long time (except when reading in the car). I’ll need some time before I dare visit a secondhand store again.

Enriquez’s writing style is perfectly suited to my taste. Her narratives flow smoothly, making each story engaging and compelling. There isn’t much dialogue; instead, each story features a narrator who sets the scene and then immerses the reader in the unfolding horror. This approach makes the reading experience both terrifying and captivating. The stories are gamblingly terrifying but impossible to put down. Enriquez masterfully balances the eerie and the intriguing, ensuring that you’re always eager to read the next page.

The collection's ability to surprise and disturb is a testament to Enriquez’s skill as a writer. She has a talent for creating unforgettable characters and settings that linger in your mind long after you’ve finished reading. The themes she explores are dark and often unsettling, but they are handled with such finesse that you can’t help but be drawn into her world.

I highly recommend this collection to readers who enjoy daring and intense stories. It’s an amazingly written work that will leave you wanting more.

Thank you so much, NetGallery and Granta Publications, for this wonderful reading experience!

Review in Estonian (Aug 19, 2024): https://brixieblog.wordpress.com/2024/08/19/a-sunny-place-for-shady-people-mariana-enriquez/

This was an incredible collection. The stories had the classic Enriquez flair but were quite new and different for her, and it was good to see her playing around with structure and language in different ways. I thought the last three stories in particular were absolutely amazing and I will be thinking about them for a long time. I can’t wait to talk to people about this because it’s such a great way of getting into Latin American horror.

More than a collection of short stories, this seems like a book of fantastic openings. Hooked from the first page, then left to flounder in mid-air.

At her best, Mariana Enríquez weaves the supernatural and mundane together so elegantly that we are forced to ask who is intruding on who. In my favourite story, our narrator’s depiction of ghettoised ghosts echoes the paternalistic language used about the living. As they are less cognitively sophisticated, they are doomed to reoffend. Yet, when the neighbourhood is haunted by the ghost of a boy who died under their watch, we realise it is not only him who is bound to repeat his disturbance, but they who are compelled to ignore, standing at the window like “hoodless executioners”.

There's something about Mariana Enriquez's that is so matter of fact, yet at once loaded with nuance and eerieness. The characters in this new collection of stories come face to face with the occult, with the darkness lying underneat Argentine society, and yet she has a unique talent for making even the most unsettling of experiences feel true to life. I don't think that A Sunny Place for Shady People is quite as strong as her previous collections, and certainly not as strong as Our Share of Night, but here is another richly drawn tapestry of South American life, from a true master of modern horror.

This was a book of random short stories and I enjoyed them all. The characters were well thought of -
Yolk was probably the most grimacing but I found that I could have read more of each one, like I had to find out more about what happened.

I think the author has a great talent for bizarre storytelling and I look forward to any released. ‘The Dangers of Smoking in Bed’ was a superb read and although this one didn’t quite reach the same expectations it was worth reading.

Description:
Enriquez returns to collections of short stories after penning that HUGE novel. Horror, with lots of body horror and ghost stories in the mix.

Liked:
The standouts in this collection for me were The Suffering Woman, Black Eyes, and the titular story. A Sunny Place for Shady People revolves around the story of Elisa Lam, which absolutely terrifies me in and of itself, and features some nice moments between friends. The Suffering Woman knits together real-world and supernatural fears in a way which is super effective, and Black Eyes does a lot with a little - taking an interesting protagonist and some lightly sketched but very evil antagonists and creating a real monster.

Disliked:
A Local Artist and Face of Disgrace felt like the weakest in the collection, with the former trying to do too much in a short space of time, and Face of Disgrace featuring an interesting sibling relationship and being fairly gross but not really succeeding otherwise.

Would recommend, although if you haven’t read her earlier collections, I’d probably start there first.

I really enjoyed the writing, I found it to be unsettling and atmospheric at the same time. However, I struggled a little with the pacing of some of the short stories. Some felt like they were dragging, whereas others went by too quickly and I wanted them to last longer. I particularly enjoyed the first two, they were my favourite from the whole collection.

A Sunny Place for Shady People is another exquisite collection of unsettling horror stories from Enriquez. True to form, each story is brilliantly written and no word is wasted. All the stories are equally high quality and engrossing, which I find rare in short story compilations, as usually I'd fine one or two stand out above the rest. It's refreshing to find a collection that keeps me utterly riveted throughout. Hugely enjoyed this, thank you for the chance to read and review!

Mariana Enriquez is a stunning short story writer! Honestly just as good as her first book of short stories. Tremendous.

This is a collection of two halves: the first half is excellent with some of the best stories I've read from Enriquez, including the title story which is sheer brilliance. But the latter selection feel B list: they're not bad but the writing feels a bit more pedestrian and the tales themselves fall into a type that we expect from this writer and other women from Latin America who are using Gothic and horror tropes to convey political and social commentary.

What makes the first set of stories so exciting for me is the way they pack an emotional punch alongside the expected imagination. Rape, femicide, drug use, street violence, migration all appear in various guises alongside ghostly and monstrous presences, marginalised voices and communities.

There's a particularly interesting metamorphic strand which uses Latin American rather than classical myths in some of the stories, displacing what usually pass for origin tales. And there's a dark humour at work such as in 'Metamorphosis' where a woman decries the way no-one has told her how her post-menopausal body will become alien to her.

For me, the truly excellent stories more than made up for the lacklustre fillers - and there are some stunners her

Mariana Enriquez has not lost a bit of her mastery of the eerie and she keeps marvelling at writing it effectively.
As someone who has read all of Enriquez’ work translated into English, I found A Sunny Place for Shady People one her most potent and competent ones in interweaving social matters with horror and thriller stories.
As for the plots of the stories, some of them were more compelling and engaging, and others have similarly styled endings.
Different Colors Made of Tears and The Refrigerator Cemetery stood out for me. My Sad Dead’s context and mood were eerie. and I wish it had been longer and a bit more complex.
Overall, if you are familiar with Enriquez, you might make yourself asking for more.

A Sunny Place for Shady People is a new collection from the acclaimed author, with stories exploring the darker side of human nature with hint of the occult. From children getting trapped in fridges to disappearing faces, there's a range of stories in the collection, which mostly build up slow horror and weird situations whilst also exploring how this might affect marginalised people in Argentina.

I've read one of Enriquez's collections before, as well as her novel Our Share of Night, so I had fairly high hopes for this collection. I enjoyed some of the directions the stories went, but I think I tend to like her titles more than her stories sometimes, as I found some of the stories just didn't really grip me enough. However, there were some stories I liked a lot and I like the way that Enriquez delves into prejudices and expectations in the stories, bringing these back as kinds of hauntings for example. Overall, I think fans of her other short story collections will like this one, but as someone who tends to want short stories to feel really dark and memorable for me to enjoy them, the stories in A Sunny Place for Shady People didn't all work for me.

3.5*

I was excited to hear Mariana Enríquez had a new short story collection coming soon, and jumped at the chance to read it. I'd read a story or two between other books in my schedule, absorbing them and eagerly anticipating the next one, and I always enjoyed it. I feel almost a little disappointed saying that I thought this was a very, very good collection rather than a truly great one—perhaps I'm a victim of my own expectations, or perhaps the author has just set such a high standard for herself.

There's a lot that I loved about A Sunny Place For Shady People; it was expected, but the writing was incredibly strong all the way through. The prose has a starkness at points, a beautifully literary style at others, that flows so well and creates such vivid imagery. Social issues are handled primarily through either the lens of ghosts, spectres and monsters, or through body horror—mostly natural. Whether aging, disease, obesity, menopause or surgery, Enríquez feels like she's in equal parts disgusted of and fascinated by these elements of the human condition. The Suffering Woman is a story that illustrates this; a woman receives an answer machine message from a wrong number, offering help to a friend with cancer. Unable to contact the caller or get the thought of the patient from her head, the protagonist starts to obsess over them, with chilling results.

A lot of my personal favourites seemed to come towards the latter half of the book, and I did begin to love it more as I continued reading. Different Colours Made Of Tears, about a woman buying vintage dresses from a peculiar older man for the store in which she works, The Refrigerator Cemetery, a twist on the idea of children getting trapped in discarded fridges, and A Local Artist, about a couple visiting an isolated village, all worked well for me. Creepy atmospheres and chilling images were plentiful throughout these and I'm sure I'll return to these, and others, in future.

There were a few stories I enjoyed less, unfortunately, although I'm sure others may find them to be amongst their favourites. Enríquez often ends stories ambiguously or seemingly as they're reaching their climax. I don't mind this with short stories, but perhaps the collection would have been better suited to a few more having definitive or stronger endings. These aspects just hold me back from being able to say I truly loved this book, although it's still a great read, and one I'd recommend to any fans of this brand of short, grisly fiction.