Why read A Sunny Place for Shady People?

Book cover of A Sunny Place for Shady People

Book description

Mariana Enriquez's A Sunny Place for Shady People is her first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, the occult and the macabre, the stories explore love, womanhood, LGBTQ counterculture, parenthood and Argentina's brutal past.

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Why read it?

2 authors picked A Sunny Place for Shady People as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sommer Schafer

Author

I love the mixture of realism and creepy surrealism in this collection of short stories. I especially admire how Enriquez ties these together so that the surreal elements feel linked to the reality and current events of the protagonists’ lives.

I love that each story centers on complete women with all their obsessions, compulsions, fears, wild senses of humor, and sometimes unusual desires. For me, it is exhilarating, entertaining, and impactful. One of my favorite stories is about a woman who repurposes her uterine fibroid in a one-of-a-kind way—just imagine!

From Sommer's list on unlikable women in fantastical everyday situations.

Owen W. Knight

Author

It may be the social environments which her characters inhabit, but menace is never far away in this author's stories. They treat impossible or unusual events with acceptance. Menace is never far away.
The best stories are Different Colours Made of Tears, Black Eyes and Metamorphosis.

From Owen's 3 favorite reads in 2024.