“A Sunny Place for Shady People†— Mariana Enriquez, Sept. 17, 2024, Random House/Hogarth, 179 pages, translated by Megan McDowell.
Mariana Enriquez is one of the bright lights of Latin American literature; she has had one novel and two short-story collections translated to English (including “The Dangers of Smoking in Bedâ€) and was a finalist for the Booker Prize. Here, her 12, transcendent short stories — which lie on the lines where the differences between good and evil are blurry — are set in her native Buenos Aires, Argentina, and all are haunted by the legacy of dictatorship there, some more obviously than others.
One of my favorite stories in the collection, in which the influence is explicit, is “Hyena Hymns.†In it, the narrator is visiting his boyfriend, Mateo’s, prosperous family. While having tea, the parents begin telling of a nearby zoo that was set on fire. The hyenas that are now in the area are thought to have escaped the flames.
The next day, Mateo suggests they visit the Aguirre palace. The narrator objects, “I hate concentration camp tourism.â€
Mateo replies, “Yes, they know the basement was used for torture. But the place was used for lots of other things, too. A summer house for rich people, who, by the way, made all the cheese you ate last night, so you’ve already got Evil in you.’’
So they go. Mistake. Big mistake.
In the title story, the narrator is from Buenos Aires but is based in New York City, writing for a magazine. Her magazine is starting a new section called “American in Weird†about strange events that involve the supernatural. She has been writing about Latin American politics, but she desperately wants to move to this new section.
So, she pitches a human-interest story to her editor: Elisa Lam, who in 2013 stays at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, disappeared on Jan. 31. The last sight of her was on surveillance footage in the hotel elevator. A few weeks later, guests at the hotel began to notice that the water coming from their taps had an odd color and foul odor. On Feb. 20, Elisa Lam’s decomposing body was found in the hotel’s water tank. How she got there is a mystery that has yet to be solved (this is a true story, by the way).
The strangeness does not end, however. Now groups of people gather around the water tank, because they believe Elisa’s spirit is trapped in there. The people are waiting for a sign.
As the narrator flies from NYC to L.A. to cover the story, she thinks, “that’s gringos for you: they’ll worship a dead girl in this sinister hotel surrounded by addicts in various states of intoxication, madness and crisis, but propriety will keep them from patting down a middle-aged Latina between her legs.â€
She gets to L.A. She sneaks into the Cecil Hotel after hours and smuggles a cell phone in. And what she sees is surprising.
It’s worth noting that in the story, there is also a mountain lion running about the city. It is hardly ever seen. So, in both stories, there are scary animals existing outside their natural habitats.
Both these stories, and the 10 others included in the slim volume, are unsettling, but only in the best, shivery sort of way. Enriquez is a master at this, and, separate from genre, her writing is pure and lyrical; she’s a worthy example of some of the best writing coming from Latin America today.
