The Enchanted

Books | Fiction / Literary

3.9

(122)

Rene Denfeld

“The Enchanted wrapped its beautiful and terrible fingers around me from the first page and refused to let go after the last. A wondrous book that finds transcendence in the most unlikely of places. . . . So dark yet so exquisite.” — Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night CircusAn astonishing and redemptive novel for readers of Alice Sebold and Toni Morrison, told from the point of view of a convict whose magical interpretations of prison life allow him to find absolute joy while isolated from the rest of humanity and a female investigator who experiences her own personal salvation in her work as a death penalty investigator.This is an enchanted place. Others don’t see it but I do.The enchanted place is a high security prison and is relayed through the eyes of an inmate on death row who escapes his surroundings by immersing himself in books, and by re-imagining the world that surrounds him. Instead of focusing on the cloudy medical vines that snake across the floor, empty and waiting for the warden’s finger to press the red buttons, our narrator sees golden horses as they run deep under the earth, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs.A woman and fallen priest haunt the prison halls--an unnamed female investigator only known as the Lady who is known for discovering information relating to soon-to-be executed inmates’ backgrounds that can be used to overturn their sentences. She is put on the case of a man named York and as she digs into his past, the experience brings up ghosts of her own and threatens to destroy everything that she has come to know about the enchanted place.The Enchanted is a magical novel about redemption, the humanity that can lie within what is monstrous, and the human capacity to transcend and survive.

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More Details:

Author

Rene Denfeld

Pages

291

Publisher

Harper Collins

Published Date

2014-03-04

ISBN

0062285521 9780062285522

Ratings

Google: 4

Community ReviewsSee all

"Definitely in the minority here. I'm not a magic realism kind of person, I guess, and all the 4 and 5 star reviews on this one have me scratching my head. Dark? perhaps because it took place in the basement of a prison? I found A Little Life to be so much darker. I'm sorry I keep going back to that book, but it's become the gold standard against which I will probably judge all other books I read. For one, this book was too short. I like reading door-stoppers. The reviews tricked me though. Imagine how I felt when my download had a total of 160-some pages......and it ended on 147! All the adverts for the book claimed 237.....it wasn't long enough for emotional investment in the characters to grow. Having said that, notice how long it took me to finish it? Not good, if I'm slogging thru such a short book for two months. Gee, I must have a life and prefer to spend my time there rather than reading this book. Horses in walls? What purpose did they (or any other magical happenstance) serve? I read most of these passages with a curl in my lip. The romance between 'the lady' and the 'fallen priest', barely explored, did little to enhance my enjoyment of the book and seemed more of an unlikely pairing and more unbelievable than anything. Sorry, the 'redemptive' quality assigned to the relationship in some other reviews here escaped me. The ending, which surprised some, fell flat for me. Throughout much of the book, I couldn't decide if this guy was highly intelligent or completely insane. All I knew for sure is that he heard things that can't possibly exist except in the mind of the completely unhinged, yet instead of 'enchanting' me, his character put me off. (shrug) I just didn't enjoy this one. Note to self: fantastical literature slash magic realism is best left to non-analytical, non-melancholy non-Librans who don't mind escaping into a world where horses run in walls and little death-men don't go raiding the urns of dead prisoner's remains. Weird, weird......weird. I can't even tell you why I gave it a single star.....for at least trying to be something it is not?"