Recommended for: fans of power struggles, Argentinian history, and cosmic horror; anyone with a heart fetish
Listen: Chalk is useful for both drawing circles and creating pleasant background noise, as demonstrated in this video.
Eat: The turmeric ensures these never pass for normal. Nevertheless, curry and bitter yerba mate lurk inside these peanut butter chocolate ice cream sandwiches.
If you like this, you may also like: “Dangers of Smoking in Bed” and “Things We Lost to the Fire” by Mariana Enriquez, as well as her other works if you understand Spanish; “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson is a classic; “Fever Dream” by Samanta Schweblin is less than 200 pages of unease, and was also translated by Megan McDowell
Content warnings: i don’t go into any details here, but the book itself is a horror novel and contains violence and death.
The year was 2007. We were assigned to read “The Lottery” in eighth grade english class, and Shirley Jackson was about to ruin short stories for me in the best way possible. Never before had i encountered something so shakingly unsettling as The Lottery. It’s horrible without the horror, dreadful and tense in a manner that’s hard to place. Later that year, i sat in a hot tub, attempting to explain the deep sense of dread to a group of other teens who were entirely uninterested. Its effect on me has waned little over the years.
You can read The Lottery here; it’s a short read and i recommend it with all my being.
I was doomed to seek out the same feeling in short stories, failing over and over again, until i picked up “Dangers of Smoking in Bed” by Mariana Enriquez. I was hooked. It’s a special kind of satisfaction that makes one say “oh, fuck” out loud, alone, to themselves, in some sort of attempt to process the kicker. and it’s a special sort of devastation that occurs when ones favorite author has written plenty of books, which you cannot read because you only understand English.
I was exuberant to learn that not only was Enriquez writing a full length novel, but it would be published in English only a few months after its original release. People on the internet who read it in Spanish told me to be excited. The bookseller said i was lucky to get a copy, since the publishers didn’t print enough for the demand. I saved it for a plane trip, hoping that my intoxication with one of the main characters, the impossibly sexy Juan, would overide my fear of situations i cannot escape from.
The novel, all 500+ pages of it, turned out somehow even better than expected. At times, it feels as though one is reading a historical fiction coming of age novel, as Gaspar struggles to discover what sort of adult he will be while also navigating violent protests, death of his loved ones, and concern for the safety of his queer friends during the AIDS crisis. Yet the Darkness that his father sacrificed so much to protect Gaspar from looms on the outskirts of his life, leaving the reader on edge wondering when his reality will crash into two.
In contrast, some sections of the book focus on the enigmatic Order so heavily that you too, can completely forget about the struggles of the working class whilst caught up in a world of ritual magic. The section about wealthy young adults fucking around with magic and drugs and music in 1970s is followed by a journalist investigating a mass gravesite full of mostly unnamed bodies, killed and forgotten by the government. Both of these things exist in the world, yet they are a world apart.
What i seek out most in books is mood; i want feelings attached to lives other than mine. In horror novels, i want an underlying sense of trepidation that isn’t created by pages and pages of grotesque or violent imagery, but a knowledge that things are fucked up without any certainty of why or how they are fucked up. Enriquez perfects the balance between everything being mostly okay and everything being everything but okay. Mostly, the characters go about their lives without any visible threats to their wellbeing. Yet it’s impossible to shake the feeling of unease. The horror feels tangible in its potential to exist in the world we occupy. This is especially true when pairing the real-life horrors of police brutality and missing protestors and irrepressible viruses with the otherworldly horror of The Darkness. Maybe the reader can forget about The Darkness and move on with their life, but the real-life horrors of a turbulent government and its disposable citizens are here to stay.
An Excerpt
I love a good run on sentence. If you don’t, you should probably quit now cos i will be recommending the hell out of them. Here is one of my favorite passages from Our Share of Night:
The Costanera Sur with its steps and lights and its roundabouts, totally empty, the sausage carts all closed up, three in the morning in Buenos Aires, walking over the grass and touching the leaves of the trees with his fingertips, not much light except for the moon, three-fourths of the universe is darkness, his father had said and Gaspar had understood, the universe was night, but not all nights were like this one, cool and beautiful, the driver in the car listening to the radio, a sad tango, all tangos are sad, and walking to the railing, not to the shore, because there was no shore, why couldn’t you touch the water? Gaspar remembered rivers in his childhood and the desire to swim at night caressed his skin. In the darkness he couldn’t see the blood on his father’s shirt; when they reached the river a gentle breeze tousled his hair, and Gaspar accepted the box of his mother’s ashes, which was about the size of a notebook, small as if it held a jewel, and this was what she had been for years now, but Gaspar could remember her warm, so far away now, now she was earth, ash, cold like the stone railing. Not here, his dad said suddenly. Let’s go out to the reserve. Are you scared? And Gaspar said no. He was never afraid with his father; he could be afraid of him, but not with him. Even though he knew his dad was sick, he seemed invincible and dangerous. Sometimes wounded animals were like that, much stronger than when they were healthy.
The Recipe
The imagery of a black hand with golden nails was enthralling, and i wanted to create something with similarly stunning contrast. Part of what i love about Enriquez’s work is how tangible it feels- like all these terrible things can truly exist under the surface. Curry powder is certainly not terrible, but it isn’t expected in a standard ice cream cookie sandwich. And of course, i had to pay tribute to the mate plantations. Tea compliments ice cream nicely because it warms up your taste buds in between bites, so perhaps enjoy this snack with a cup of yerba mate, hopefully harvested by fairly paid workers and not ones under the thumb of a power hungry cult.
Yerba Mate Cookies
Modified from Blk and Vegan’s S'mores Cookies, who has a website full of cookie recipes and an e-book. This variation is on the bitter side from the mate and extra cocoa powder, which pairs wonderfully with the sweet and spicy icecream.
Ingredients:
6 tbs vegan butter
1/2 c brown sugar
1/4 c sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp finely ground yerba mate (i used a spice grinder)
2 tbs vegan milk
1 c flour (i use Bobs Red Mill 1 to 1 GF baking flour, but i am sure this will work with good ol’ wheat flour)
5 tbs cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp corn starch
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter, brown sugar, and sugar. Add the vanilla and mate. Mix in the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt. Slowly add the milk, adjusting the amount based on how wet/dry your dough is.
Make balls of about 2tbs. Bake for 12-14 minutes. We want them on the soft side since they will be frozen, so take them out a little bit before you normally would. Let cool completely before forming into ice cream sandwiches.
Peanut butter curry ice cream
This recipe is modified from Vegan a la Mode by Hannah Kaminsky. You can find a copy here.
Ingredients:
1/2 c peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 can full fat coconut milk (13.5 oz or 1 3/4 c)
3/4 c non dairy milk
2-3 tsp mellow curry powder
2-3 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
Blend everything except the curry powder. Add two teaspoons of the curry powder and give it a taste. The flavors won’t be as bold when it’s frozen into ice cream because cold things chill your taste buds, so make the base a little sharper than you want the finished product.
Chill in the fridge. Churn in an ice cream maker however your ice cream maker works. Make sure your cookies are completely cool before you start churning.
To assemble:
Scoop some ice cream onto a cookie. Top with another cookie, and dip the whole thing into some black sesame seeds. Let firm up in the freezer or eat right away.