The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
2021; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 95; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2021.0264
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Resumo0 from 1938 to 1968. For each year, a fouror five-page vignette relays the historical facts of the country along with its storyline . Intertwined throughout all the political upheaval are the lives of four young friends, each depicted to represent a different nationality within Czechoslovakia: Jan, a Czech; Gabriel is Jewish; Peter is from Hungary; and Maria, from Slovakia. There is a rather thin love story that runs through the text, but it works well as a continuing thread through regime changes during the thirty-year span. Rankov, a prolific writer, captured the 2009 EU Prize for Literature for this work; in December 2020 he was awarded the Prix du Livre Européen. Surely, September is his masterwork to date. And no need to factcheck any details in this one (which is quite a feat in itself). Rankov is factually accurate on all accounts. The book really swings into rhythm with the 1948 Soviet “liberation” of Czechoslovakia and the formal installation of communism (“social democracy” in Soviet-speak). The onset of communism and its ills such as limited freedoms, travel, speech, along with the terror of the secret police comprise the remainder of the story and its effects on the four friends. All were required to work for the Communist Party. However, only Peter, strictly a party man, swallowed the Communist ideology and became an influential journalist . But as time goes by, he struggles with the meaning of it all and contemplates jumping ship. Maria especially held antipathy toward the party because they wrongly arrested and imprisoned her father as being a double agent in the war. Like all the other citizens in this police state, she learned to show a public face to authorities and then relax in the home setting. Gabriel and Jan escape Czechoslovakia to another country only to return because of disillusionment with the politics of the new country. Maria tries to be the gentle voice of reason to the three men and encourages them to toe the line. Nearing the story’s end, the toll of living the past thirty years under a totalitarian state shows plainly on their psyches. They learned to live their outer lives quietly, underground, long ago discovering that daily life under the regime was absurd. September is not without humor. Rankov likes to poke fun at party brass. And no hints here as to which of the three men ends up as Maria’s spouse. The translation is adequate, but September doesn’t read like a European novel, so loaded down with American slang and all. Maria can close this one out: “It’s where we ended up. Not because of our own mistakes , because of politics. We weren’t able to live our own lives; we had to live the way we were told to.” Virginia Parobek Cleveland Mariana Enriquez The Dangers of Smoking in Bed Trans. Megan McDowell. New York. Penguin Random House. 2021. 208 pages. A DEAD BABY and her haunted greatniece open The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez’s collection of disquieting short stories. In “Angelita Unearthed,” the eponymous infant wears its feet down to the “little white bones” as it follows the narrator into an irresolute ending. This introductory story portends the brutally macabre tone of the ensemble. Originally published in 2017, this new translation by Megan McDowell follows Enriquez’s lauded collection The Things We Lost in the Fire (2016, Eng. 2017). Enriquez swathes her dozen stories in the viciously fantastical and grotesque, ensuring that her readers never settle: one encounters human excrement and blunt sexuality more than once. In each story, the ravages of poverty, misogyny, and the ghost of a government under dictatorship invade the private lives of teenage girls and young women. Through these characters, Enriquez develops the interpersonal effects e WORLDLIT.ORG 91 BOOKS IN REVIEW of Argentina’s larger socioeconomic landscape . Mundane cruelty and selfishness infiltrate much of Dangers, particularly among the teenagers; the apathy that runs through stories about homelessness, mental illness, and wealth disparity is reconstructed as teenage disputes in “Our Lady of the Quarry” and “Back When We Talked to the Dead.” In “The Lookout,” a ghost in the guise of a young...
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