None of us. And it is magnificent. He looked at us differently, as if comprehending that he was with an ugly skank. LITERARY FICTION | Mariana Enriquez, trans. When Diego and Sylvia play a trick on the girls at the quarry, a dangerous place named the Virgins Pool, the revenge that one of them extracts is much worse. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 3.67 avg rating 6 Mariana Enriquez, trans. The point is "Our Lady of the Quarry," a darkly nostalgic story about a group of Argentine girls who become obsessed with their leader and idol, Silvia, who is older, wiser, more worldly and hence cooler -- if not necessarily better looking -- until Silvia draws the attention of the guy all that the group of girls is all unanimously crushing on: Diego. On the near side there was a little beach of clayey dirt. And when Natalia approached it the false virginal white sheet had fallen on its own, she hadnt touched it, like the statue wanted her to see it. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed establishes Enrquez as a premier literary voice. Knowing that the narrator of Where are You Dear Heart initiated her fetish by falling in love with Helen in Jane Eyre (my favorite book as a kid, too!) Mariana Enrquez Archives - The Mookse and the Gripes And he said, Why dont we swim over to the Virgin? Natalia went pale, because she didnt know how to swim. Hogarth, $27 (208p) ISBN 978-0-593-13407-8 By David Wallace. Mariana Enrquez and Megan McDowell on The Dangers of Smoking in Bed Family intrigue plays out against the backdrop of 1920s Claiborne County, where racism is a given, Prohibition is the law, and bootlegging is the main source of income for Blacks and Whites. In the end, we get the dogs only, uncannily large, and no owner. Our Lady of the Quarry has a spatter of Stephen King: a clique of sex-crazed teenagers confronts their monstrous lust on a torrid summer afternoon. Is it important that they share the same desires? Otherworldly elements crop up throughout Smoking In Bed: divine figures like the skeleton-faced Santa Muerte; scarlet-red statues looming over quarry pools; mysterious revenants who inexplicably return from the dead; ghosts of dead babies and brothers who trail after the stories narrators.What makes Enriquezs fiction so affecting is how grounded the world that Mariana Enriquez on Teen-Age Desire. Tough to choose just oneI definitely liked Our Lady of the Quarry and its plural, mean girl narrator. But we wanted her ruined, helpless, destroyed. Max Rozenfeld has spent much of the war imagining how the destruction of Kharkiv presents opportunities for reinventing its future. The black dog as evil is a very traditional image, but it works for me. Latitude & Longitude (WGS84): 45 1' 37'' North , 5 38' 42'' East. And that the red was really well painted, and it shone, like acrylic. . The first story in Mariana Enriquez's latest translated short story collection, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, finds a woman haunted by the ghost of her great-aunt. I liked the slow unfolding of the zombie-kid horror in Kids Who Come Back. The visceral shock of Meat. Theyre stories you can come back to over and over and always find something new. ; "Our Lady of the Quarry" by Mariana Enrquez translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell . Theres an element of childhood trauma: I saw a dog attacking its owner once, and it was really gory. Categories: "Our Lady of the Quarry" - PressReader At one point they had to stop, and, as we watched from the shorethe sun beating down on us, dust plastered to our bodies with sweat, some of us with headaches from the heat and the harsh light in our eyes, walking as if uphillwe saw them stop and talk, and Silvia laughed, throwing back her head and treading water, paddling with her arms to stay afloat. "Our Lady of the Quarry" is narrated in the collective voice of the group, tracking the girls' growing impatience with their "grown-up" friend Silvia . We listened devotedly and looked for messageswas he trying to tell us something? Amid widespread protests, the Prime Minister has halted a package of illiberal reforms. When Diego and Sylvia play a trick on the girls at the quarry, a dangerous place named the Virgins Pool, the revenge that one of them extracts is much worse. In the end they let her go dancing, but they also sent her to a psychologist. 3232 3 Shares Share She probably would have told us, but we would never ask. Our Lady of the Quarry by Mariana Enrquez | Goodreads Theirs is a whole new canon. The Virgins Pool was special, people said, because almost no one ever went there. Mariana Enriquez's fiction is haunted by the specter of late-twentieth-century Latin American history. It was a black dog, though the first thing Diego said was Its a horse. No sooner did he finish the sentence than the dog barked, and the bark filled the afternoon and we could have sworn it made the surface of the water in the quarry pool tremble a little. Mariana Enriquez is Argentina's writer of the moment. Because it was true for all of us, it wasnt just an obsession of Nataliaswe wanted Diego to choose us. We arrived at the beach in a very bad mood, and we ignored all of Silvia and Diegos attempts to make us laugh. What attracted you to the voice of these girls speaking together? Diego and Silvia went faster than us, and we saw their dark heads appear at intervals, shining golden under the sun, so luminous, and their arms plowing slippery through the water. Rate this book. Why? The dog was as big as a pony, completely black, and it was clearly about to come down the hill. Hi Mariana, what has it been like to be longlisted? Silvia was the one who came up with the idea of the quarry pools that summer, and we had to hand it to her, it was a really good idea. If we tried a new drug, she had already overdosed on the same substance. There we were in all our glory, and he was over there kissing on old, flat-ass Silvia. What drew you to the voice of these girls speaking together? {Photograph} by Marta Perez / EPA-EFE / ShutterstockOur Lady of the Quarry, your story on this weeks concern, doesnt have Their spirits are low, but the stakes couldnt be higher. Champa quarry, Le Gua, Grenoble, Isre, Auvergne-Rhne-Alpes, France Who would ever love her like that, with dandruff, depression, zits on her back, cellulite, hemorrhoids, and everything dry, so dry.. Mariana Enrquez's Buenos Aires, meanwhile, is scarred by decades of austerity, squalor and inequality, deadly misogyny, and the disappearance of around 30,000 people during the dictatorship. Mariana Enrquez, New Yorker Fiction Mariana Enrquez: Our Lady of the Quarry This week's New Yorker story is "Our Lady of the Quarry," by Mariana Enrquez and As in her previous collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, Enrquez mines her inner Poe: Her characters grapple with ghosts and their own hauntings. hardcover. She diluted it a little in water, but she said it should work all the same. They must have seen the way we were panting, our armpits stinking like onion and our hair stuck to our temples. You could reach it by going around the pool along a dirt path that started at an improvised entrance from the road, which was marked by a narrow iron arch. Everything from the girls' idolization of Silvia, to their sexual lust that they talk about acting on but never do, to their jealousy over their friend's success with the opposite sex, to their ultimate betrayal and abandonment of her, in a moment driven by petty teenage bitterness, is right out of Being a Teenager 101, if such a book existed. It was said that when there were trespassers the owner would drive out from behind a hill and start shooting. The New Yorker - "I like feeling unsafe in a story, both | Facebook He taught us to make a roach clip out of a matchbook, and he watched out for us, making sure we didnt get in the water when we were too crazyhe didnt want us getting high and drowning. Oh, we just hated it. How was it possible? We tried to keep quiet, to not make any racket that could wake the hidden owner. One of her short story collections received its English translation in January. and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. What brand was it? Wed sucked cock, yes, we were quite good at that, but fucking, only some of us had done that. Not really. There was even dust in her eyes. [9], "Mariana Enriquez, orgullo de Valentn Alsina, gan el premio Herralde: el mundo privado de una enorme escritora", "Mariana Enriquez: "Nunca practiqu ningn rito ni creo en lo sobrenatural", "Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enrquez | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books", "Mariana Enriquez gan el Premio Herralde", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mariana_Enrquez&oldid=1142726725, This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 01:28. Its not my favorite book of his, but the image of the enormous black dogs trained to rape was such a great image of evil that I used it. In 2019 she won the Herralde Prize for her fourth novel, Nuestra parte de noche ("Our Share of Night"). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . "Our Lady of the Quarry," a volatile mix of teenage vanity, jealousy, and rage leads to a summoning of dark powers and disproportionate revenge. Why dogs in particular, and is there something creepier about there being no other human presence in this strange place? She had the provincial last name of Olavarra and a cousin who had disappeared mysteriously while travelling around Mexico. Youre a flat-ass skank, and youre a shithead, and those are my dogs!, There was one ten feet away from Silvia. Title: Our Lady of the Quarry Title Record # 2952432 Author: Mariana Enriquez Date: 2021-01-12 Variant Title of: La Virgen de la tosquera [Spanish] (2017) [may list more publications, awards, reviews, votes and covers] Type: SHORTFICTION Language: English User Rating: This title has no votes.VOTE Current Tags: None The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, by Mariana Enriquez 9780593134078. Shed done it at Silvias housewhere else! by Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Natalia put on a shirt and a skirt, whispered to us to get dressed, too, and then she took us by the hands. Were there any particular horror stories that inspired this one, maybe even a certain kind of slasher film or B movie? What kind of Virgin is the statue, and why do you think Natalia is able to summon this curse? Whoever is telling this story, they do not like Silvia, even if at first glance Silvia seems to be a good friend: She was our grownup friend, the one who took care of us when we went out and let us use her place to smoke weed and meet up with boys. "Our Lady of the Quarry" - Pinterest As entertaining as it is affecting and channeled into English with almost clairvoyant percipience by translator McDowell, this is one not to be slept on for enthusiasts of weird fiction and literary horror and of writers like Samanta Schweblin, Amber Sparks, Ayse Papatya Bucak, and Carmen Maria Machado. Here we have Our Lady of the Quarry, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, whose work I really like. Mariana Enrquez and Megan McDowell interview on The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Fiction by Mariana Enriquez: "Once, the bus driver said something strange to us: that we should watch out for wild dogs on the loose." "Our Lady of the Quarry" I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past. Posted in Culture. We sneaked out a lot, sure, but we were controlled by schedules, cell phones, and parents who all knew one another and drove us placesout dancing or to the rec center, friends houses, home. Because Silvia always knew more: if one of us discovered Frida Kahlo, oh, Silvia had already visited Fridas house with her cousin in Mexico, before he vanished. (Like Flores and Schweblin, Enriquez's work is translated into English by Megan McDowell.) Things We Lost in the Fire - PenguinRandomhouse.com 'The Dangers of Smoking in Bed' by Mariana Enrquez (Review - IBP 2021 Sallie wants to support her sister but sympathizes with the bootleggersher neighbors and tenantsand recognizes that the family's finances depend on trading whiskey. Mariana Enriquez | Granta We all agreed it was incomprehensible. We saw them start to feel guilty. We started to walk. They had also forgotten each other, enchanted by the coolness and the secrecy. When I wrote "Our Lady," I was obsessed with teen-age girls and with my own teen-age years. One I know for certain did itand she got the boy, for a while anyway. How did you think about the movement of the story into a more magical or unfamiliar destination? We wanted Diego for ourselves. In another, "Our Lady of the Quarry", printed in . She wanted him to want her, to like her, she wanted to drive him crazy. By Trevor Berrett | December 14th, 2020 | Categories: Mariana Enrquez, New Yorker Fiction | Tags: 2020 New Yorker Fiction | 6 Comments Mariana Enrquez: "Spiderweb" Categories: What if hers was the phobia of a provincial tourist? Mariana Enrquez holds a degree in Journalism and Social Communication from the National University of La Plata. Natalia skipped the sessions and spent the money on stuff for herself. Diego and Silvia reached the Virgins grotto just as we were turning right to walk the final fifty yards.