Ktoś chodzi po twoim grobie

by Mariana Enriquez, Katarzyna Kozioł-Galvis (Translator)

Przewodnik po światach... należących do zmarłych.

Mariana Enriquez przemierzyła kontynenty i kraje w dość niecodziennym celu: aby odwiedzić rozsiane po całym świecie cmentarze.

Na stronach książki pojawiają się 24 miejsca: znane i naznaczone historią nekropolie, jak Montparnasse w Paryżu, Highgate w Londynie czy żydowski cmentarz w Pradze, a także inne, ukryte, zrujnowane, odległe lub podszyte tajemnym pięknem. Znajdziemy w niej opowieści o grobach sławnych ludzi – jak Elvisa w Memphis czy Marxa w Londynie. Odkryjemy ekstrawaganckie epitafia, pełne boleści rzeźby, zmysłowe anioły, ślady voodoo w Nowym Orleanie, gotyckie mauzolea, katakumby, szkielety, wampiry, duchy, a także nieprzebrane bogactwo legend i opowieści: o poecie pochowanym na stojąco, o grobie wiernego konia i o zalanym cmentarzu...

Ten wyjątkowy przewodnik podszyty jest nutką grozy, ale znajdziemy w nim też humorystyczne akcenty, odniesienia literackie i nieskrępowaną kronikę osobistych przeżyć, takich jak wyjazd do Hawany w poszukiwaniu zaginionego w tajemniczych okolicznościach gitarzysty zespołu Manic Street Preachers.

Czołowa autorka literatury grozy XXI wieku, w niezwykle błyskotliwym stylu zaprasza czytelnika nie tylko do zgłębienia sekretów kryjących się na cmentarzach, ale też do swojego literackiego świata.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Horror, Travel, History, Essays, Death

400 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2013

About the author

Mariana Enriquez (Buenos Aires, 1973) es una periodista y escritora argentina.

Se recibió de Licenciada en Comunicación Social en la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Se ha desempeñado profesionalmente como periodista y columnista en medios gráficos, como el suplemento Radar del diario Página/12 (donde es sub-editora) y las revistas TXT, La mano, La mujer de mi vida y El Guardián. También participó en radio, como columnista en el programa Gente de a pie, por Radio Nacional.

Trabajó como jurado en concursos literarios y dictó talleres de escritura en la Fundación Tomás Eloy Martínez
Mariana Enríquez is a writer and editor based in Buenos Aires. She is the author of the novel Our Share of Night and has published two story collections in English, Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed , which was a finalist for the International Booker Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Speculative Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction.

Reviews

[Azul · Rating 4 out of 5]

no sé que pacto con el diablo hizo la mariana, pero amo su forma de narrar. no logro identificar qué es lo que me gusta tanto. pero le leería hasta la lista del súper.

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

even mariana enriquez's titles are creepy fantastical one of a kind

(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Coos Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Y con ustedes: mi libro favorito de Mariana Enríquez. La forma en la que documentó cada viaje me resultó fascinante, su obsesión casi morbosa (que comparto por completo) por los cementerios me hizo revivir una época de mi vida en donde los visitaba con frecuencia, y me resultó nostálgico. Haré una videoreseña sobre este libro donde además de compartir mi opinión en detalle sobre este libro, hablaré un poco sobre mi propia experiencia con los cementerios.

Link de mi canal: https://www.youtube.com/coosburton

[Maria Lago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Háblame, Mariana. Cuéntame más cosas. Estoy tan a gusto a tu lado... Que nunca vamos a ser amigas, vale, pero una cosa te digo: cachiporra.

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

In her mid-twenties writer and journalist Mariana Enríquez visited Italy with her mother. There she fell for a Byronic street musician and Staglieno, the cemetery whose angels have appeared on the cover of Joy Division’s music. Enríquez didn’t become a fan of the band but she did develop a lifelong fascination with cemeteries, enough to consider herself a connoisseur. This assemblage of short, non-fiction pieces revolves around visits to cemeteries across the globe, spanning the period from 1997 to 2020. Enríquez’s travels take her back to Argentina but also to Chile, Australia, Prague, New Orleans and the British Isles along with other destinations. Enríquez blends personal observations with snippets of political and cultural history as well as references to art, literature and music. At times there’s a psychogeographical feel to her explorations.

Travelin Cemetery in Patagonia stirs discussions of the Welsh communities that settled there in the 19th century; the Australian coastal island of Rottnest, where aboriginal peoples were once imprisoned, links to reflections on hidden histories and the marginalised; time spent in the Lovecraftian, Chilean city Puntas Arenas invokes thoughts about colonial violence and eerie tales from the past; in Lima, Peru an unsettling guard regales her with a series of gruesome stories. She encounters eccentric guides, notably at the guesthouse in Savannah, Georgia – known for its supernatural tourism - where her room’s adorned with a massive nude portrait of one of her hosts. Prague and Guadalajara connect to ancient myth and legend from the golem to Mexico’s famed Day of the Dead. Enríquez’s fascination with the work of seventeenth-century folklorist Robert Kirk and his writings about fairy folk – inspiration for her story “Kids Who Come Back” – takes her to Edinburgh, Scotland where she uncovers sinister details of the graverobbers who once haunted its cemeteries. Her political interests combine with her musical tastes leading her to Highgate Cemetery. There she poses in front of Karl Marx’s grave wearing the leopard-print coat she bought as a tribute to favourite band the Manic Street Preachers; and she goes to Germany in search of the remains of Frankfurt School theorist Adorno.

Enríquez’s enthusiasm for her chosen subject’s palpable and often hard to resist. Overall, informative, and insightful. I enjoyed this far more than I’d anticipated. Her approach reminded me a little of Patti Smith’s in M Train although Enríquez’s work’s more disciplined, more grounded in wider research. Translated by Megan McDowell.

Thanks to Netgalley and Granta Publications for an ARC

Rating: 3.5

[Nicolás Tauriani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siempre que no sepas qué leer, lee Mariana Enriquez. Ella narra con tanta naturalidad y de manera tan accesible todo sobre lo que escribe, que su lectura te introduce de lleno en la temática y quedas rendido a sus pies, o mejor dicho, a sus letras.

[Mariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mariana Enríquez se ha ganado mi corazón por completo. Hasta ahora, solamente había leído dos de sus libros de cuentos y tenía muchas ganas de leerla en otro género. Fue así como llegué a sus crónicas.

Mi opinión sobre este libro quizá esté algo sesgada, debido a que la autora y yo compartimos la fijación con los cementerios. Esta obsesión que podría catalogarse como una especie de necrofilia -sin el componente sexual, por supuesto- ha llevado a la autora a plasmar sus increíbles recorridos en cementerios, ubicados en diversas partes del mundo.

Desde cementerios argentinos en donde las cruces de las tumbas están chuecas (una especie muy rara de cruces transversales), hasta un recorrido histórico por las catacumbas de París y los cementerios de Nueva Orleans, pasando por Perú y México, la prosa de la autora te transporta por completo y sientes que estás viajando con ella.

El toque personal, la manera en que ella vivió las cosas, lo que pasaba en su vida al momento de visitar dichos cementerios... es algo que le agrega muchísimo a este libro y que me permitió conocer mejor a una escritora que me gusta tanto.

Mi capítulo favorito probablemente fuera el de las Catacumbas de París, seguido muy de cerca del que dedica a un par de cementerios en Guadalajara, Jalisco. Aquí, como no podría ser de otra manera, reflexiona acerca de la relación de los mexicanos con la muerte y lamenta no haber podido experimentar un Día de Muertos en carne propia, pues si no lo has vivido no hay manera de hablar de ello.

Hace mucho que no disfrutaba un libro a tal grado, lo llené de notas, subrayé muchas frases y sobre todo, anoté lugares que algún día me gustaría visitar como parte de un macabro peregrinaje.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-El cementerio como hilo común, no como pretexto.-

Género. Relatos (no exactamente, en realidad, pero lo explico a continuación).

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Alguien camina sobre tu tumba (publicación original: 2013) es una recopilación de textos que, en la mayoría de las ocasiones y de forma más o menos estricta, usan las visitas de la escritora a distintos cementerios del mundo para hablarnos de otras cosas, ya sean personales o universales, no siempre de manera directa.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...

[Meli · Rating 4 out of 5]

No es perfecto, a veces es reiterativo, algunas de las visitas que narra son poco interesantes, muchos datos históricos me aburrieron y sentí que le faltaban más imágenes para acompañar al texto. Pero Mariana es buena cronista (aunque mucho, mucho mejor autora de ficción), sus experiencias están salpicadas con detalles personales muy interesantes, es un libro para leer con el Google abierto porque te dan muchas ganas de ver las tumbas, monumentos, las ciudades, las bandas, los libros y mil etcéteras sobre las que vas leyendo. Muy enriquecedor en ese aspecto. Y, finalmente, creo que pocas cosas nos increpan más que la muerte, así que este libro en general es una experiencia extrañamente cálida y curiosa.

[Maxwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.5 stars]

A balance of memoir and history. Enriquez describes her various trips to cemeteries all over the world covering about 25 years of her life. It’s the kind of book you can dip in and out of; I read one chapter a day for a few weeks and enjoyed the experience! It inspired me to look out for cemeteries to visit on my future travels.

[xelsoi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nunca pensé que diría esto sobre algo de Enríquez, pero me aburrí un montón con este libro. Si bien la autora crea una imagen vívida y propia de cada cementerio, no consigue volverlos interesantes más allá del dato curioso. Creo que el primero de los relatos es el único que disfruté.

[Cardenio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si no hubiera sido porque Mariana Enríquez lo escribió, difícilmente hubiera leído un libro como este. Se trata sobre visitas a cementerios de distintas partes del mundo, y son descritos con tanto cariño y detalle que me queda claro que son los lugares favoritos de Mariana.

En cada una de las crónicas -que son alrededor de quince, por ahí-, se describe no solo la apariencia física de estos lugares, sino también la experiencia de visitarlos. Mariana mezcla brillantemente Historia, periodismo y humor en una serie de relatillos muy interesantes, a veces divertidos pero siempre anecdóticos. Una de mis crónicas favoritas es "Rosas de cristal", en donde se describe la visita de Mariana a Cuba que tenía como objetivo principal asistir al recital de los Manic Street Preachers. Allí se describe también su relación de amistad con Albertico, escritor cubano que se convierte en el primer amigo muerto de Mariana. Otra crónica que me gustó mucho, y que destaca por su humor, es la de su visita a las catacumbas parisinas: Mariana se ríe de un italiano que se desmaya entre los osarios subterráneos y de paso se roba un hueso en exhibición (al que pone nombre y trata como a una mascota). Cómo no quererla.

La última crónica, dedicada al entierro de Marta Taboada -una detenida desaparecida argentina, cuyo cuerpo fue entregado a 35 años de su muerte- me hizo pensar muchísimo en la importancia de los cementerios como espacios de memoria. Si bien esta significación puede ser obvia para todos, no lo es para mí, porque no me siento parte del ritual familiar de visitar a los seres queridos que murieron. Principalmente porque tengo la suerte de que la gente que quiero sigue viva. Pienso en los detenidos desaparecidos reconocidos, cuyos cuerpos probablemente estuvieron en fosas comunes y ahora se encuentran enterrados dignamente, y comprendo la importancia de la sepultura. Hay una frase de Mariana que marqué en las páginas finales que decía algo como que los cementerios son el vestigio de que alguien quiso recordarte. Es bonito, porque la memoria se inscribe tangiblemente en las lápidas, las sepulturas y las flores a través de ese ejercicio de recordar al muerto y visitarlo de cuando en cuando. Gracias a las crónicas de Mariana pude comprender esta dimensión de la muerte que, al menos para mí, no era obvia.

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Even today, when I describe Born—and this is in spite of the fact that I know it well, well enough to not get lost anymore—I still say that the streets have “roofs,” and it’s not true. Memories from toxic years tend to be tenaciously sticky.’

Better RTC later. I knew it's a full 5 for me quite early on. Also, this is my first Mariana Enriquez. I've yet to read her other work/fiction because a close friend of mine (who is a massive Mariana Enriquez fan) insisted that I don't get any because she wants to give me her annotated/highlighted copies (so I'm not allowed to read any until I receive those copies) . I knew I would love M. Enriquez when (I stumbled on an interview of her with her English translator) she told her translator she would feel extremely offended/upset if she messed up the translations of her text where 'football' is involved . Breezed through this in no time, if that counts for anything. Highly, highly recommend.

‘Back at the house, Ned is sitting in the small entrance gallery, drinking what looks like iced tea but could also be whiskey. I ask what time the morning train leaves. He tells me to be careful, that they often come early or late, that Amtrak is a disaster. He’s still grumpy, but he laughs—“I’m sure you’ll be happy here,” I tell him—He doesn’t go in for any nonsense. “Well,” he says. “A person can be very unhappy in the prettiest place on earth, and he can be his happiest in some industrial suburb. Savannah is lovely, but we’ll see if it makes me happy.” Night falls over the city. Near Ned and Steve’s house, it’s said, the souls of those who died of malaria two hundred years ago still wander the square at night. But for now, there are only the sounds of northern accents and clinking champagne glasses, and the smell of sweet magnolias on the breeze.’

‘Someone said that Diego Maradona, the football star, might show up—he was in rehab on the island—but it was a false alarm. The band was disappointed. A Norwegian journalist of staggering beauty, well over six feet tall, said that she’d been scared for Fidel Castro, and had been shocked by the lack of security. Simon, a British journalist, said that Castro was just using the band, but that it only seemed fair because the band, in turn, was using the revolution. No one fully understood what was happening. They asked me; I’m Argentine, like Che Guevara, so supposedly I must understand that political process. I imparted the lessons of a master class with all the arrogance of a Latina: I got haughty and behaved terribly, and I felt like they deserved it. Then I felt ashamed and got drunk on sugarcane liquor.’

‘I think several times about veering off, playing dumb, the Latin American who doesn’t understand, and wandering around taking pictures and pretending to be lost. It’s been days now since I’ve talked to anyone. My neighbors in Forest Hill are suspicious of me, I think because Anne didn’t tell them I’d be using her house while she was on vacation. They give me dirty looks, especially since I tend to forget to close the little gate, even though, in my opinion, it makes no difference whether it’s closed or open, because if it’s for safety, it barely separates the yard from the street—it’s very low and you could jump right over it. Maybe it’s a rule of etiquette I’m unaware of. In the pub across the street, I watched the final episodes of Game of Thrones with a crowd of people, but none of them said a word to me, nor I to them—and maybe that’s why I don’t seek out other fans in London who I know are here, and with whom I could have a drink, or walk around or share our obsession—.’

‘I talked—about Marcelo Bielsa just to say something, because I know he likes football. And whenever he turned to talk to someone else, I felt time running through my hands like water and like sand, like the two things together, ungraspable and pasty and annoying and painful, prone to turning cold and scratchy. He got into the band’s van and left, but first he thanked me for coming all the way from Argentina. That was it. And later on, in the pub with Mary, all I could think about was how if that man came in and looked at me and talked to me, and said, for example, “Oh, I’ve read your stories,” I would be capable of leaving my life behind—Just because he’s a kind of fetish of another life, when options and possibilities existed that are gone today.’

‘The grave of Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, has the best epitaph: “Better a spectacular failure than a benign success.” It also has a bronze death mask rendered as a bust, surprisingly old-fashioned: I would expect some kind of punk craziness, but no. Nearby is Pat Kavanagh, the legendary literary agent who left her husband, the writer Julian Barnes, to have a romance with the writer Jeanette Winterson, then went back to him. Do they visit her together? Do they hate each other, or even know each other? The headstone is black and gold and has her initials, PK, as if her name were so powerful as to be irrelevant. Barnes remembers her like this in Levels of Life: “I told one of the few Christians I know that she was seriously ill. He replied that he would pray for her. I didn’t object, but shockingly soon found myself informing him, not without bitterness, that his god didn’t seem to have been very effective. He replied, ‘Have you ever considered that she might have suffered more?’ ”’

‘I read Sillitoe’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner when I was a teenager and it seemed to me that there was nothing sadder than England, specifically Nottingham and Essex, the places in the story Smith traverses after leaving home—the England of Dickens and the projects. So different from the one in the music of Bert Jansch, who is also buried in Highgate, near the door to the east side; Jansch was of Scottish origin, and one of the major players in the British folk revival. He played several times with Bernard Butler, the former Suede guitarist who left the band in 1995, that terrible year when Richey from Manic Street Preachers also disappeared. That’s why Neil, who joined Suede that year, was important for me: he was the one who came in to assuage my grief. Bernard didn’t die, of course, and he’s still a musician and producer and one-man band, but I remember those pink VHS tapes that would come from other countries in cardboard boxes, the international communication between fans by post before there was internet for all. I would watch those videos, watch Bernard, with his long nose and glorious mop of hair, in those days of guitars and coke and cold. They weren’t happy or sad, but they seemed eternal.’

‘My relationship with Barcelona continued to develop, and it grew intense and complicated. The city was a paradise for young people from Argentina’s impoverished middle class, many of them my friends, and I was left behind. To emigrate, you need to have money and also a certain predisposition, and I always found excuses not to make the move. I didn’t want to leave, at least I don’t think I did, but it’s hard to remember what I really felt, because leaving was a destiny and a duty; the farewells happened with a frequency that came to seem normal. Most of my goodbyes took place in La Plata, where I grew up; the kids there were educated for exile. They learned languages as a means of escape.’

‘Death’s gender is unclear, since it’s a skeleton—could be a man or a woman. The famous Catalan funerary sculpture is a homoerotic piece, and its sensual sadness hews to a modern sensibility; its solitude is outlined against the sky and waits near the sea like a welcome stranger.’

‘—a stylized image created by Wilfredo Viladrich that shows the young woman with her dog, Sabú, has had many names—to her current moniker, “the corpse bride” (from the sixties to Tim Burton in five decades). She died in February 1970, in Austria. During her honeymoon, an avalanche of snow destroyed the hotel where she was staying. The family built her a neo-Gothic temple; in the basement there’s an oil portrait of Liliana painted by a friend, and the coffin is covered by an Indian sari—She’s not my personal favorite, though, perhaps because of all that privilege. (How much money did you have to have in Argentina in 1970 to go to Austria for your honeymoon?) We wouldn’t have been friends. Still, Liliana is beautiful: to me she looks like one of the Venusian characters from the anime Captain Harlock, especially with her vacant eyes, but everyone dresses her up according to their own references.’

‘—not many people know about the theft of Eva Perón’s embalmed corpse. Or even about her bizarre mummy. Her Spanish embalmer, Dr. Pedro Ara, published a book explaining the whole process, though not in detail; it is not a how-to manual. Written between 1956 and 1960, it has a pompous tone and features quotes from Goethe, along with photos of Eva’s body in various phases of preservation. More importantly, in 1995 the Argentine writer Tomás Eloy Martínez published Santa Evita, a novel about the body’s journey that was an international bestseller, but the case seems to have been forgotten anyway. Maybe it needs a film? Or maybe some people are turned off by how morbid it is, or they think it’s an urban legend. In any case, I have to tell the story of postmortem Eva to most people for the first time, and I usually do it here in the cemetery, and with relish.’

‘My friends are still all worked up about Eva Perón, and I try to explain that the mistreatment and moving around of her body is unusual but by no means anomalous in this country, and particularly in this cemetery. There is a real obsession with opening graves, removing bodies, relocating them, kidnapping or hiding them, which, I think, is a national characteristic. My friends are horrified when I say that, but there’s really no point in denying it. The saga of Eva Perón’s corpse and the fight over bodies during Peronism, which would have its crown of shadows during the 1976–83 dictatorship.’

[Stacy (Gotham City Librarian)]

I really liked the concept of this one, but I couldn't connect to the material. I think I was hoping for more of a personal memoir. Instead, it was very heavy on dry facts and history and the straightforward presentation of that information was distracting for me. I felt like I was reading a textbook at times and I couldn't concentrate.

[Dona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pre-Read Notes:

I grabbed this arc as soon as I saw it was from Mariana Enriquez. I adore her horror novel Our Share of Night. It seemed like an obvious choice!

Final Review

(thoughts & recs) I really love fiction from this writer, and I did think this was a collection of fiction when I requested it. But they are actually essays about graveyards the author has visited in her travels around the world. Some are more interesting than others, in my opinion, but all share a grim wonder, Enriquez's signature voice, that leads the reader through fascinating history and lifeless cemeteries.

This was a good read and I recommend it to fans of essays, graveyards, or Mariana Enriquez.

A word about the essays:

1. "Death and the Maiden" - A wild little piece about sex in graveyards, sexy tombstones, and unrequited love.

2. "Maracara" - A piece about fallen soldiers and possible hauntings the author experienced at Trecelin Cemetery in Argentina.

3. "Every Hour Wounds; the Last One Kills" - "Those who die young always have company, I think. Always a father or mother who remembers them and cares for their gardens more than forty years later." p37

4. "A Bar in Broome" - An essay about an indigenous graveyard in Australia. Locals had to fight to get the land protected and identified.

5. "The Most Beautiful Cemetery in the World" - "The saint’s faithful also decorate his statue: he wears lace necklaces, crucifixes with huge agonizing Christs, and bracelets, and he’s practically covered with flowers. It’s an explosion of color and feeling, almost a miniature plea for forgiveness, and, as always in these cases, an attempt to mitigate any fury. Turning the Unknown Indian into a saint is better than the other possibility : that he become an avenger." p68 Gorgeous.

6. "No One Dies Here" - "The neighborhood is dying. Its decay, violent and forlorn, is not yet death, but it will be. Still a visible ruin, it will soon disappear into the jungle." p85

7. "The Moon Over Bourbon Street" - "I don’t have a car. And having no car in the United States is like not having a pulse." Accurate and a brilliant way to sum up American dependence on cars.

8. "Black Dogs" - I just love this writer. "I’ve been to Mexico only for work and by invitation, always at the end of November for the Guadalajara International Book Fair. The first time, in response to who knows what nonsense I’d said, another writer who was taking the bus from the airport to the hotel told me with some arrogance, “Mexico is vast.” I shut up. I understood her perfectly. I cannot get to know this country. It’s terribly huge and diverse and it would take a whole lifetime to study it, and maybe you have to be born there to even begin to understand it. I can’t hope to comprehend anything about that Mexican immensity." p105

9. "The Headless Dominican" - "I get an urge to run straight over to that explosion of festivity that is the cemetery on Sunday; my driver tells me people go there for picnics, and they play the guitar and stick around until sunset." p124 What a beautiful idea of a cemetery, bursting with color and life. Also, these cemeteries are the doorways into a rich history, which Mariana Enriquez is happy to share with the reader.

10. "Gothic Green" - "There’s something hypnotic about walking from grave to grave, taking pictures of the Gothic letters, of young half-naked girls among the flowers, of angels with one arm resting on marble. It’s all intense and eternal: the Germans really know how to do a cemetery." p141

11. "Salt Statues" -  A wild tale with a moral: communities, take care of your cemeteries *before* they need repairs from your negligence.

12. "The Absent Girl" - This is a story about a statue, now in a cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, that possesses literary and Hollywood fame.

13. "Crystal Roses" - "“He can’t. He’ll die when he dies, but he can’t be killed. They’ve even tried with a parrot.”  “A parrot?”  “Yep: it flew straight at him with a bomb inside it.”" p177 From a hilarious exchange about Fidel Castro.

14. "The Secret Commonwealth" - An essay about a plague cemetery in England. "The rampage of death was such that it became common for people to be buried alive, which is why many coffins had bells in them . The only problem was that it was hard to hear them ringing once the coffins were in the ground." p190

15. "A Victorian Afterworld" - A story about a masculine queer woman who lived (by choice) through Italy's fascist era (because she opposed women's sufferage) and wound up in a cemetery in London.

16. "Like a Queen in Chains" - Mariana Enriquez writes beautifully about all the places she visits, even and maybe especially when the surroundings are dreary. "A city buried by its own wondrousness, I think. A city that everyone wants to see and whose shine has worn off from all that looking, like an old carnival attraction, lonely in spite of the people who still peer in through the bars to catch a glimpse of the mermaid’s tail, its scales now dulled. I think of the oft-cited myth about a photograph stealing the soul." p222

17. "Stones Upon Stone" - This one is a bit brief and haphazard, but there are some interesting notes about Israeli graveyards.

18. "A Bone for the Innocents" - A rather stinky story of Paris and the author's favorite graveyard which no longer exists.

19. "The Kiss" - A really fun story about the author's coming of age and a cursed grave in Barcelona, Spain.

20. "The Apparition of Marta Angélica" - A piece about the discovery and burial of murdered woman, Marta Taboada, in Buenos Aires, whose body had been missing since the 70s.

21. "Death on Display" - A piece about the life, death, and burial spot of Eva Perón, or as she is popularly known, Evita. "Of course they want to see Evita’s tomb, and I never know how to find it; I usually just follow the guided tour groups. I’m fascinated, as we arrive, to learn that my friends don’t know that Eva Perón is buried eight meters underground, crushed under concrete. Or, rather, I’m amazed that they don’t know why. “It’s to keep people from stealing the corpse. Or mutilating it.”" p278

Notes:

1. content notes:  graveyards, gravestones, death, corpses, grave robbing, bones/skeletons, decomposition

Thank you to the author Mariana Enriquez, Hogarth, and NetGalley for an accessible digital arc of SOMEBODY IS WALKING ON YOUR GRAVE. All views are mine.

[ana (ananascanread) · Rating 4 out of 5]

mariana enriquez said ‘come walk through cemeteries with me’ and i said okayyy~ didn’t realize she’d drag my soul by the ankles while we were at it.

[Ina Groovie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mariana es un género en sí misma. Este paseo solemne por las casas de los muertos es una idea maravillosa: una excusa perfecta para la crónica que la define. Es autobiografía y rock. Pulsión de muerte.

[Fred Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about touring graveyards is a bit unusual. But it does seem a suitable topic for an author who writes horror stories. Enríquez writes about her visits to many famous cemeteries. In addition to descriptions of the cemeteries and notable monuments, we get a lot of stories about people buried there and local customs. Perhaps the oddest custom is the Bolivian Fiesta de las Ñatitas, the festival of skulls. The skulls, for the most part, aren't even of family members, but they are venerated as bringers of good luck. As Charon might say, whatever floats your ferry.

I particularly liked the chapters on New Orleans, Guadalajara, and the Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Enríquez spends a lot of time on Voodoo as well as the unique funeral culture of New Orleans. You have to like a city that turns a burial into a party (if you haven't seen a NOLA funeral, watch the opening of Live and Let Die). The chapter on the cemeteries of Guadalajara has a lot on Mexican Dia de los Muertos. And much of the chapter the Recoleta is on the truly bizarre "afterlife" of Eva Perón. I haven't read Saint Evita, but I might have to after this.

A surprisingly lively and entertaining book!

[Brandy Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I applaud you, Mariana Enriquez you got me to pick up a non-fiction book! This was a beautiful blend of history and personal experience.

[Silver · Rating 1 out of 5]

Si esta es una muestra de la forma de escribir de Mariana Enríquez, pasará un buen tiempo hasta que vuelva a leer algo de ella, si es que lo hago.

En este libro pone un conjunto de datos y fechas tan innecesarios e irrelevantes que los olvido al pasar la página. Aquí un ejemplo:

“En el año 1979 fue construido el canal colector Florentino Ameghino, que posee una longitud de 92 kilómetros, 30 metros de ancho y 2,5 metros de profundidad. Este emprendimiento costó 30 000 000 de dólares. La falta de obras complementarias de regulación hizo que en los períodos ricos en lluvias, como los que se sucedieron a principios de la década del ochenta, comenzaran a producirse inundaciones... Desde 1980 hasta 1985, no se llevó a cabo obra alguna para la regulación del caudal del canal Ameghino."

Y solo he puesto una parte eh. Es cierto no todos los datos y notas son tan largos (gracias al cielo), pero sí innecesarios.

También me cuenta pasajes de la vida de personas y personajes que no me interesan, no me interesan porque la autora no sabe lograr que me interese por ellos.

En ningún momento llegué a transportarme a los lugares que visitó. Ni siquiera cuando llegue al capítulo donde visitaba mi ciudad.
Más que un libro es un conjunto de anécdotas nada evocadoras sobre los lugares por los que viajó.

Ahora sé que si deseo transportarme a esos atrayentes lugares tendré que visitarlos por mí mismo (lo ideal) o leer a un buen escritor que lo haga.

[Lucas Sierra · Rating 4 out of 5]

No es lo mejor de Enríquez. Sus cuentos son mejores, indiscutiblemente. Pero es buena cronista, ingeniosa, capaz. Me gustó leer su obsesión, tener acceso a ese tras escena de sus ficciones. Compartir su amor por la muerte, por la vida, en el fondo, y encontrar en su testimonio las señas de su mundo.

Ahora a esperar que su nueva nivela llegue a Colombia, y a leerla con todas las ganas del mundo.

[Lucinda Garza Zamarripa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una manera de conocer una ciudad es a través de los lugares en los que entierran a sus muertos. Mariana Enriquez nos presenta una antología de crónicas (en mi caso, yo leí la actualizada) en las que se mezcla la historia con lo anecdótico y lo personal.

[Victoria · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I saw this book, I was immediately intrigued, however I found it to be disappointing.

Part autobiography, part travelogue and part thoughts on death and grieving, it is poorly written which ended up making it a chore to read. The chapters are disjointed, flow poorly and seem rushed in places.

I felt taking things from graveyards as well as having sex in them was incredibly disrespectful. There were parts that were poorly researched too which leads me to suspect that the author has an interest in graveyards and cemeteries to appear "quirky" as opposed to having a genuine interest. The random ramblings about various bands seemed inappropriately placed too. I would also have appreciated more photographs for context.

Overall, not for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Granta Publications for the ARC.

[Irma Pérez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi amor por Mariana Enríquez aumenta con cada libro que leo. A ver ahora de dónde saco yo el dinero para ir a visitar todos estos cementerios.

[dessie*₊⊹ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Feels like an unwanted history lesson at times instead of interesting book. A lot of detailed passages read like a textbook. The descriptions of the sites themselves were interesting. Everything else was just there. Like the pointless dig at some random hippie for being fat.

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mariana Enriquez is an Argentine writer; her 2013 book (originally published in Spanish; I listened to the English translation) Somebody is Walking on Your Grave recounts her fascination with cemeteries and decades of travel to various notable cemeteries around the world.

This is now the 3rd book I've read about cemeteries (the first being Greg Melville's Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries, which focuses on historical American burial practices and burial sites, and the second being William Krejci's Buried Beneath Cleveland:: Lost Cemeteries of Cuyahoga County, which recounts historical burial sites around Northeast Ohio that are no longer maintained as cemeteries and have reverted back to nature or urban terrain). Enriquez' book leans much more heavily into the travelogue genre than either of the aforementioned books, to the point where I felt I learned significantly more about Enriquez' moderate obsession with Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers and her personal experiences and reactions to the cemeteries than the cemeteries themselves. I suppose it should have been a forewarning that the book opened with a protracted vignette of how Enriquez became fascinated with cemeteries, which involved a sudden infatuation with a sparkly vampire boy playing the violin on the streets of Italy that quickly (d)evolved into an impromptu cemetery tour that went from vertical to horizontal.

Anyway, I finally kicked the bucket (pun intended) at around the 64% mark of the 14-hour audiobook, after the content I was hoping for never really materialized.

My statistics:
Book 317 for 2025
Book 2243 cumulatively

[Audrey Grey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a slog to get through. Enriquez is a gossipy goth girl cemetery tourist who is judgmental of tourists and tourism, seemingly weirded out by dead bodies, and still fan girling over a punk band with a mentally ill lead singer who probably killed himself. I gave this 2 stars because there is some interesting information about the different cemeteries she has visited, though a lot of it is lost in her judgy commentary and immaturity.

There is no reverence for death or death culture, though plenty of fascination with macabre randomness that struggles to tell a cohesive story.

Maybe this is my fault? I put this book on my holds list at my local library before it became available and was really excited to read it - maybe the overhype lead me to be more disappointed than is reasonable.

[Carolina Estrada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Como todos los viajes de Mariana, estos son los relatos del submundo. Sus historias describen esos lugares que nunca hacen parte de la lista de los turistas cuando viajan: los cementerios.

No es el mejor que leído de ella, pero me gusta su estilo. Mucho.

El libro termina con unas letras muy bellas: “Qué hermosos son los cementerios, pienso mientras miro por la ventanilla el cielo gris. Donde se pueda leer su epitafio. Donde quedan el nombre y la fecha, una voz que dice: estuve, fui. A lo mejor ya nadie sabe mi nombre, pero alguna vez alguien me recordó”.

[DAISY READS HORROR · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting topic that I never thought of. This made me want to go to the cemetery and read the tombstones. 🪦

I think it’s very kool that the author got to visit several cemetery’s in different countries and explained some
Of the history behind some of the tombstones 🪦 & the people who lay to rest there.

& by the way I was bummed the French man never came back after having met him 😢

[Rosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tot lo que escriu Mariana és una passada però lo tema dels cementiris fa temor i clar m'ha costat. Me quedo en lo cementiri que la mare li diu a una Mariana megaenamorada: què t'esperaves si era Italià??? LOL