Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez
Published 2016 · 224 pages · 60,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Horror, Literary Fiction, Short Fiction
How hard is Things We Lost in the Fire to read?
Things We Lost in the Fire scores 39 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 32 out of 100
- Clear, direct prose in McDowell's translation. Some Argentine-specific cultural vocabulary. Enriquez writes for immediacy and impact.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Grounded in concrete social reality. The supernatural erupts from specific Argentine places and conditions rather than abstract philosophical premises.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with social, political, and cultural detail. Each story encodes Argentine history—the dictatorship, class violence, environmental ruin—alongside its horror plot.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Mostly direct narration with supernatural elements that arrive unexpectedly. Some stories build through implication rather than explicit revelation.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- Fire as reclamation, polluted water as buried history, homeless children as Argentina's disappeared—Enriquez's horror is deeply symbolic of national trauma.
- Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
- Enriquez writes with journalistic directness rather than ironic detachment. Her narrators witness horror with clear-eyed urgency.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- Many stories end abruptly, without resolution. The supernatural is never explained. Social conditions persist. Horror is ongoing, not resolved.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Conventional short story structures. Linear narratives with clear arcs. The collection's thematic unity creates larger meaning across individual stories.
How Things We Lost in the Fire is regarded
Things We Lost in the Fire holds a literary regard score of 60 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.