"Our Share of Night" by Mariana Enriquez, 2017

 **A masterpiece of supernatural horror.  You're not going to totally understand what's happening, but you're going to know that whatever it is, it's viscerally uncomfortable in the best way**

(note, I read the original publisher's translation by Megan McDowell, released 2023.  I think that's the only translation so far)

Ok, elephant in the room:  This is a tome.  600+ pages, and more importantly than that it's one of those books where you're deliberately kept in the dark for much of it.  Oh and it's basically five different novellas combined with each other, with more than four different viewpoint characters and five different time periods (plus a few short story length bits from random viewpoint characters that fit into the gaps).  Even by the end of it, there are still so many unanswered questions.  So if you're looking for a linear, single-viewpoint, clear narrative . . . uh, this is not any of those things.  And if that's not your jam, I'd say that you're going to be very frustrated with this book.

But if you're willing to jump (get tossed) right into the deep end and accept that you're going to be surrounded by dark water . . . yeah, there is a lot to love in this book

The setup is a classic.  Dark, obscure magical entity, and an Order (somewhat unoriginally referred to as "the Order") willing to stop at nothing to gain its power.  Secret rituals and dark dealings, all that good stuff

But Enriquez starts with this basic premise and takes it so much further.  She adds in themes of colonialism, Argentina's tumultuous 20th century history, and generational trauma, among other themes.  So much generational trauma:

Gaspar asked if they would get the ashes, and his uncle replied that it would be up to them. He added that Juan had told him: If you scatter them, do it in the river. But as long as they’re in the same house as Gaspar, let him decide when. Again, the box of ashes on a shelf. That’s what it meant to be an orphan: to have boxes of ashes and not know what to do with them.

If that sounds like a lot, it is.  As alluded to above, this book is actually a series of parts, each told by a different viewpoint character from our main family (while comparisons to "100 Years of Solitude" are a bit grandiose, they're not totally out of line).  At one point, we even turn the page and realize that we're a few decade prior, seeing things from the viewpoint of a character whose death kicks off the events of the novel's first part.  That, by the way, is a literary device I absolutely adore, when done properly--I'm a sucker for a good flashback

But of course, at its best, this book is simply good at being dark:

He told her about London, about his wife, Lily, who was waiting for him though he had been gone for over a year. He told her about the cold sea and the snow. Olanna listened seriously: George noticed how she learned, but at the same time did not consider anything he said to be wondrous. It was simply different from what she knew. She spoke too, and when she couldn’t make herself understood, she drew in the air with her hands. She told George about a forest where thousands of demons lived, but there was one that reigned; it would hang from the trees and its feet were on backward, so its footprints never gave away where it was going. She told him about the wood carvings her uncle made and about her father’s riches and honor. She missed her jewels. She told him about forests of bones, about skulls that rolled between the trees. One night, while the ship swayed gently, she told him that certain beings were content with wine and flowers, but real gods demanded blood.

I loved this book because of how unashamed it is at throwing everything at you.  

In particular, the themes of colonialism is a powerful one.  The Order scours the world for young "mediums" that can tap into the dark force from which they draw their power.  And of course, they find these children in impoverished nations and bring them back to London (or, eventually, to Buenos Aires).  The ruthlessness with which these powerful, wealthy, privileged people take what they want from the rest of the world is stark and unsurprising, but eloquently portrayed throughout the novel:

Once, when Grandfather was telling us the story—he repeated it regularly, so we wouldn’t forget: he would even question us about the details—I asked him what the boy’s name was. I must have been eight years old. Grandfather had to admit they hadn’t recorded his name. The diaries just called him “the Scottish youth.” That is also what it is to be rich: that contempt for beauty and the refusal to offer even the dignity of a name.

In many ways, Enriquez is pulling a little bit of reverse colonialism--stealing a type of story that has so commonly been told by the West, kidnapping it, and dragging it across the ocean to Argentina.  Or perhaps she's taking these privileged people and letting them be seen not through their own eyes, but through the eyes of their victims around the world

Because Enriquez knows the most important rule of writing a story about some dark demonic power--if the biggest villains in the novel are the demons, you've missed the entire point.  Because no demon can ever rival the evils we humans manage to inflict on each other all on our own.  Enriquez absolutely understands that, it's one of the core tenets of the entire book (of the entire genre)

But the flipside of course, is that although humanity so often does terrible things, every once in a while one member of our misguided race manages to step up and be better and more noble than any of us have a right to expect.  In the end, this book is about sacrifice.  The ones we are forced into the ones we choose, and the ones that are maybe a little bit of both:

True magic is not done by offering the blood of others, he’d been told. It is done by offering one’s own, and abandoning all hope of recovering it.

That line comes up in one of the first few pages of the book.  Enriquez is letting you know exactly what kind of ride you're in for

I loved this book

I asked her if she knew that before the Chinese figured out what gunpowder was for, they’d thought it could be used in an immortality elixir. How did they find out they were wrong? she asked me. The most logical way possible: it blew up in their faces, and ever since then they’ve used it in fireworks. And the truth is that when I see particularly beautiful fireworks, I really do feel immortal.