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.
Why read it?
2 authors picked A Sunny Place for Shady People as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
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!
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.
If you love A Sunny Place for Shady People...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Want books like A Sunny Place for Shady People?
Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like A Sunny Place for Shady People.
Share your top 3 reads of 2026!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
186
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like A Sunny Place for Shady People, you might also like...
Child of Vanris
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
Almost Home
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
