Book Rex: Our Share of Night
A book for parents who are scared for their kids.
Juan is a medium. He can see ghosts and he can summon an eldritch entity known only as “the Darkness” from other dimensions to ours. Because of this ability, Juan has been forced into becoming the unwilling servant of an occult coven of brutal, wealthy dark art practitioners who collude with the right-wing Argentine military junta of the late 1970’s to throw “disappeared” victims as a sacrifice to their dark god in exchange for hints at how to achieve immortal life.
Though Juan is virtually enslaved by the Order, as it’s called, he is immensely powerful, and capable of shocking violence. In the fifth page of the novel, he becomes irritated at a waitress:
The woman was still apologizing, and Juan felt drained. When she reached out to take the money, he held on to her wrist. He thought about marking her with a symbol that would drive her mad, that would put the idea in her head to skin her grandson’s feet or cook her dog in a stew. But he held back.
Juan’s recently deceased wife, Rosario, was a prominent member of the Order, and his six-year-old son, Gaspar, seems to be showing even stronger abilities than his father’s at a young age. Juan is desperate that his son not suffer the same fate he has.
This is the premise of Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez’s immense, perfect novel Our Share of Night. It is the first of her novels to be translated into English, though I’ve previously raved about two of her short story collections (Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed) on this newsletter before. This book cements her status as the greatest horror writer alive1. Absent maybe Frankenstein, The Shining, and The Haunting of Hill House, I simply do not have other contenders for “Best Horror Novel of All Time,” and I am pretty sure this beats them all handily.
What makes this book special is the relationship between Juan, Gaspar, and Rosario. The novel switches intermittently between their perspectives, first showing us Juan’s desperate efforts to save Gaspar, then showing Gaspar’s uncomprehending horror at the grotesque and evil things his father does in the name of “saving him,” and then cutting to Rosario’s torn relationship between the Order that gave her everything, the man she loves, and the son who, if she so chose, she could destroy in the name of becoming one of the most impossibly powerful people in existence.
As a father (and a son) what was most devastating was how unflinchingly it shows the ways in which parents and children hurt and misunderstand each other, how quickly protection can turn to violence, and how what’s meant as love can feel like oppression and hate. The passage that gives the book its title encapsulates this perfectly, and is perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve read in years:
On the other side, on a muddy path through tall grass with pools shining like mirrors under the moon, he took Gaspar’s face in his hands, leaned down to look him in the eyes, and caressed his hair, the box on the ground between them, and he said, You have something of mine, I passed on something of me to you, and hopefully it isn’t cursed, I don’t know if I can leave you something that isn’t dirty, that isn’t dark, our share of night. I like this, said Gaspar, and his father replied, Of course you do, because now nothing can hurt you. Nothing? Right now, nothing. They walked without dodging the puddles that were impossible to avoid, soaking their feet, muddying their pants, Gaspar stopping from time to time to let his father catch his breath, it was so hard for him to walk now, I’m going to miss him, he thought, I’ll be glad when he’s gone because without him it’ll be easier to stop being sad, but I’m going to miss him.
Enriquez, like Gaspar, was born in the early 70s, was a child during the dictatorship, and came of age in the tumultuous years following its collapse. Her Argentina is a haunted place, by ghosts literal and figurative, and she manages to show innocence butting up against lurking evil in a way that no one save Stephen King has ever quite so effectively managed.
If you like horror, you need to have already read this book. If you don’t like horror, that’s fine — this book is occasionally very scary, but it’s a family epic more than anything else. If you’re a parent and want to process the terror of having a child in dark times, this is your book — we all want to save our kids from pain and horror, but our protection and care has the ability to also smother and destroy.
I cannot recommend Our Share of Night enough. Enriquez’s writing is somehow both poetic and fast-paced, and Megan McDowell’s translation is breathtaking. Buy it here2.
And yes I both love Stephen King and know that he still draws breath.
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