"The Intoxicated Years" - A Short Story by Mariana Enríquez . 2017 from. her collection Things We Lost in the Fire- translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

Gateway to Mariana Enríquez on The Reading Life


You may read “The Intoxicated Years” here


Very Perceptive post from The Kenyon Review on Things We Lost in the Fire

“I realized she had slept with him. Andrea smelled different, and sometimes she looked at us with contempt and fake smiles. I told her she was a traitor. I reminded her of Celina, a girl from our school a little older than us who had died after her fourth abortion, bleeding out in the street as she tried to get to the hospital. Abortion was illegal and the women who performed them sometimes just threw the girls into the street afterwards. There were dogs in the clinics, they said the animals ate the fetuses so they wouldn’t leave any traces behind. She looked at us angrily and said she didn’t care if she died. We left her crying in the plaza.”  

Recently i did a Google search on “The best short story collections of 2017".  Of course the list is just the opinion of the maker, or maybe something they were paid to write.  I found on the list Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez.   I read one of her stories (see the link above) and wanted to enter further into her vision of the mean streets of Argentina.

"The Intoxicated Years" (see the link above) begins in 1989 with three late teenage girls learning to use cocaine.  Enriquez makes you wish for a razor.  

We skip to 1994.  The friends have moved onto acid.  We are their as they are splitting a tab.  One of them now has a boyfriend who is with them.  Lots goes on with them in this session.  The descriptions are marvelous.

I hope  to read more of her work, eventually her entire collection.