Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend.
The Enchanted is one hell of a debut. Jarring, pithy, and unsettling. The story, conveyed through the eyes of a man on death row, unveils the blurred lines between guilt and innocence. He presents a world both wondrous and filled with nightmares, leading us by the hand to a gut-punch of a conclusion.
He can chat with a man like York, he can even show kindness to a man like Arden, but he knows in his heart that they deserve to die. Such men are like diseased dogs or demented animals. You can bemoan what made them killers, but once they are, the best thing is to put them down with mercy.0062323334 Many years ago I went to the theater to see a movie called Dead Man Walking. One of the few movies I have seen that I had not read the book first, I am however, a big Susan Sarandon fan and tried to see all movies in which she took part. Anyway this was an emotionally powerful movie and I knew the other in the theater felt the same way because at the end of the movie there was dead silence, for quite a few seconds and than everyone rose to their feet and clapped. After reading this book I had the same reaction, I put the book down, stopped and thought about it and am still in fact thinking and processing. Actually gave a little chuckle when the famous nun, though nameless, has a brief appearance in this book.
This is a hard book to read, a book about death row inmates, just the subject matter tells the reader this is not a happy little story. Nice people usually do not end up on death row. What made that movie and this book so powerful is not that excuses are made for these prisoners, what they did was horrible, but it does allow the reader to see them as people. The main characters in this book are not names, they are the lady, the fallen priest and our narrator who stays unnamed until the end of the book.
This is a story of lost men, of all sorts of emotional and in some cases physical pain, and how they did or did not handle this pain. Our narrator uses books at first, I know that when I read books about love, they are telling the truth. The truth of it winds around my heart and tightens in pain. I try and see it through my eyes, raised to my stone ceiling, and wonder, What is it like to feel love? What is it like to be known? Later in the story he will use magical thinking, horses snorting and galloping throughout the prison, little men with hammers and other visuals he will use to keep his sanity.
The prose is amazing and I believe that though this author has written non fiction this is her first novel. This book will evoke powerful emotions in the reader, whether they hate the book or admire, (can't really use like here, it just doesn't seem appropriate) what this author has managed to put down on a page, they will not read this and feel nothing. This is another book that I believe will haunt me.
ARC from publisher.
0062323334
“Inside, the lies you tell become the person you become. On the outside, sun and reality shrink people back to their actual size. In here, people grow into their shadows.”
This is a book about monsters. And the stories they have to tell.
Set on death row in a maximum security prison, this book is narrated by a man whose name and crimes we are not told. Through him, we see the lives of men inside the prison - those who long for death, those who would do anything to escape it, those who came to prison for petty crimes and ended up paying far more than their crimes were worth. We also see the lives of others - a priest who wonders about redemption, prison guards who believe that some men deserve to die, and a lady who wants to save them all even though she isn't always sure why.
The Enchanted is about humanity at its worst, at its most monstrous. It's a gritty, highly disturbing read that contains all manner of sexual abuse, violence and drug use. But it is also a beautifully-written debut novel that will haunt me for a long time. I thought it managed to pack many experiences into a short amount of pages without seeming over-burdened by them, introducing many different characters and developing them all into interesting - albeit often despicable - human beings.
I admit that the death penalty is an area that I like to steer my mind away from and I'm glad I live in a country where it isn't up for much debate. My initial instinct is always to see it as a bad thing, to decry it as being a violation of something fundamental... but perhaps I am a hypocrite, because I'm certain I wouldn't feel so forgiving if the victim was someone I loved. Then again, what if the culprit was? I don't even know. Most people, when asked, would say they'd go back and kill Hitler if they had the chance, so I guess nearly all (if not all) of us are willing to cross the line sometimes. We all just define the line differently.
But, despite what I initially wondered might be the case, this isn't a book about pushing a message. Or that's not what I took from it. I don't think this is about whether or not the death penalty should be used or whether or not people deserve to die, it is far more complex than that. If there is any message here, it's that everyone - even monsters - has a story.
A woman who let men come and go through her door for years, to molest her baby. Not out of evil but for a reason that's harder to accept: she didn't know better.
The ending surprised me and has continued to leave me feeling hollow and haunted - in a good way, I might add. I understand that this won't be a book for everyone and I don't want to play down some of the vivid descriptions of vile acts and upsetting scenes, but if you think you can stomach it, I highly recommend this book. It was a simultaneously beautiful and ugly story, based on the author's own experiences as an investigator on death row, and I really hope Denfield writes more in the future.
Blog | Leafmarks | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr 0062323334 Wild horses galloping underground. Really? I will hate this. “But it’s not fantasy,” my friend insists. I smile fakely and say without hesitation (like we all do when we know damn well it’s not up our alley), “Sounds good, but I have a bunch of other books I have to read first.” All along I’m thinking, is she crazy? I hate fantasy! And I hate magical realism! No way in hell will I read this. Then she actually buys me the book. Oh shit, how can I get out of it now? I vow to give it a try, reminding myself that it’s perfectly okay to stop reading if I hate it.
Fuck. First page, I’m a goner.
See for yourself. Here’s how it begins:
This is an enchanted place. Others don’t see it but I do.
I see every cinder block, every hallway and doorway. I see the doorways that lead to the secret stairs and the stairs that take you into stone towers and the towers that take you to windows and the windows that open to wide, clear air. I see the chamber where the cloudy medical vines snake across the floor, empty and waiting for the warden’s finger to press the red buttons.
This is a dark book, a brilliant book, mostly narrated by a madman on death row. The wild horses are merely running around in his imagination. This is, of course, totally acceptable to me, lol. They are the madman’s fantasies; the author isn’t feeding me a line that there are real wild horses underground. Pshew. I am now a ready and willing captive.
The language is lyrical, just beauteous, which instantly draws me in but instantly worries me too. I don’t want to commit to a long prose poem, I need a plot. I needn’t have worried, though, because the plot is alive and riveting. There’s some violence (not gory) and lots of sadness. Saying this book is dark is an understatement. I’ve never thought of myself as loving dark books (I don’t do horror books; don’t go in for lots of violence), so it’s odd I’ve read of slew of dark books lately and they’ve all been favorites.
I liked the totally mad inmate telling the story. He’s wise and sad and out there, and you can’t help but feel sorry for him. A woman (simply called “the lady”) investigates the life of an inmate who is about to be executed. There are evil inmates, an innocent inmate, a fallen priest, a bad guard, and a good warden. You feel their essence; the author gets kudos for being able to create such vivid and sympathetic characters in such a short book.
The bleak descriptions of the prison drew me in. And being inside the complicated, brilliant, but sick head of the narrator as he astutely and emotionally observes the prison and the people within it, is chilling. He hears horses galloping underground and little men hammering in the walls, and you understand his reality. Hell, I started LIKING the invisible horses and the men with hammers. I felt like I was in on a secret, like the narrator was whispering truths in my ear, and no one else could hear.
Other than one minor point-of-view problem, where the narrator’s voice is interrupted by the inner thoughts of someone else, I have no complaints. I excuse that little glitch because I love the book so much.
There is one other little issue that seems funny, only because I ran into the same exact problem in a book I just read. I just have to add it as a spoiler.
If, like me, you don’t want to touch fantasy with a ten-foot pole, think twice on this one. My friend (whom I should have trusted all along) was right—this isn’t fantasy. It IS magical realism, but here I'm all in. I’m so glad she kept pushing this book in my face. And who doesn’t want to hear the fantasies of a mentally ill man on death row? Really.
I didn’t want to put this book down, yet I didn’t want it to end either. Weird and brilliant. 5 stars all the way, baby. 0062323334 Beautifully written book about a prison, primarily the death row block and a lady that investigates their cases to try to get them off death row.
There was love in these pages too, you end up caring about all of these characters, even the most horrific, as some of their background stories come to life.
This was an enchanting and atmospheric read. 0062323334
Rene Denfeld ✓ 6 Read & Download
This is an enchanted place. Others don't see it, but I do.
The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. Fearful and reclusive, he senses what others cannot. Though bars confine him every minute of every day, he marries magical visions of golden horses running beneath the prison, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs, with the devastating violence of prison life.
Two outsiders venture here: a fallen priest, and the Lady, an investigator who searches for buried information from prisoners' pasts that can save those soon-to-be-executed. Digging into the background of a killer named York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, honour and corruption-ultimately revealing shocking secrets of her own. The Enchanted
this is a grim and haunting story that takes place in a crumbling, but still occupied, prison. the narrative is shot through with threads of magical realism which ordinarily would be employed as contrast to lessen the horror of the surroundings, but here these flourishes frequently intensify the bleakness.
i'm going to refrain from talking about the book's overall message because death penalty stuff always brings out the cranks on both sides of the issue, and ain't nobody got time for that. but i will say that i fully support the death penalty when it comes to bedbugs, because their recidivism rate is somehow more than 100% and also they are assholes.
instead i will focus on the story and the writing, because it's a pretty impressive debut novel from someone who'd only written nonfiction before this. the narrator is an unnamed-until-the-end prisoner in solitary confinement in the underground death row section of the prison. he does not speak, but he escapes his surroundings through books and witnesses the enchantment running through the prison: golden horses galloping, tiny men with hammers in the walls, and the creepy flibber-gibbets. the less said about them, the better. but he sees so much more - well beyond the confines of his bars, and he serves as an omniscient narrator who tells the stories of the other characters: the lady, the priest, the warden, and york, a fellow prisoner whose death date is fast approaching.
this structure makes it hard to say what's real and what's imagined. i assume we are meant to sort of forget that this prisoner would have no access to witnessing the scenes he relates, much less have access to the other characters' thoughts, but it's hard to ignore sometimes. as much as i love an unreliable narrator, passages like this one, where he admits to a blurring between reality and fantasy, are almost begging you to doubt what happens outside of the bars:
Sometimes, when reading a book, I would think of the other people who might have touched it before it was donated. A nice woman who lay down with her baby for a nap might have held the book I was reading. I could see her, lying in a sundress on faded rose-printed cotton sheets, the book splashed open in the sunlight. A little of that sun could have soaked into the pages I was touching.
After a time, it seemed that the world inside the books became my world. So when I thought of my childhood, it was dandelion wine and ice cream on a summer porch, like Ray Bradbury, and catching catfish with Huck Finn. My own memories receded and the book memories became the real memories, far more than the outside, far more even than in here.
but it doesn't take away from the story much, it's just a little niggle that sticks in your brain. or my brain, anyway. i have a sticky brain.
the story itself is much larger than you'd expect from such a short book. the lady is a death penalty investigator assigned to york's case, trying to save him from his impending death, which death york emphatically does not want saving from. through her inquiries and research, her own past is also revealed, much of it troublingly similar to york's. the priest is actually a defrocked priest, whose loneliness calls out to the lady's own, and they begin a friendship within the walls of the prison that provides a tentative beauty in all the misery. along with the warden, these two characters show that even people who are free have bars around them - a kind of self-imposed isolation resulting from guilt, fear, illness, and the weight of the past.
there are large horrors to be found here; stories of rape and brutality and the white-haired boy, but the ones that really stuck in me were the smaller-scale events: what striker did to the book, the line Troy had a party, the forgotten inmate, the soapy gray dishwater surrounding the food… although that's a lie - the white-haired boy will also stick in my head for a long, long time. but there are other large and more central-to-the-story horrors with less staying power in my craw, probably because they were more familiar. which is in itself a horrifying statement.
denfeld has written a quiet but powerful story here, drawing on her own experiences as a death penalty investigator. and while i didn't always agree with it, and while i thought the magical realism elements didn't always work or contribute, this is still a gorgeously-written piece of fiction, with a lot to chew on after it ends.
here's a passage that i think showcases the gloomy beauty of her prose:
The important part is the window on the far wall. If the inmates strain hard, they can see the sky through that window. The clouds might be fluffy and white one day, traced with pink and mauve the next, or lit on fire from a sunset.
The window is the reason the death row inmates go to the visiting room to see their lawyers and investigators. The lawyers think their clients want to see them. No, they want to see the window. When the visit ends and they are led in chains back to the dungeon underground, where they spend their days trapped in a six-by-nine cell with no window and no fresh air, a flat cot and open toilet with an endless circle of dark brown in the bowl and a flickering lightbulb in a metal cage, they can remember that scrap of sky. They might go months down in the dungeon between visits, even years. But on those rare days when they are summoned to the visiting room, they know they will see the sky.
When they return to the dungeon, they can tell the others. It was reddish today, and the clouds were the color of plums, they might say. Or I saw a bird - so pretty. No one will dispute them. There are some things people lie about in here - okay, people lie about most things in here. But there is one thing on death row that no one lies about, and that is what they saw in those scraps of sky.
i await her second novel...
come to my blog! 0062323334 I am 9 reviews behind schedule, arghh. I realized Today that 2 months have passed since I read this novel and promised to return with a review. Life got in the way but I finally have the time to write a few words. The downside to taking too much time to write a review is that my memory of the feelings I had for this novel started to fade so I will be downgrading my rating a bit. It seems I‘ve been overexcited right after I finished.
The novel is about an old maximum-security death row prison, “an Enchanted place” in the eyes of one of the main characters. The novel shifts between two POV’s, an unnamed mute inmate bound for the electric chair for a gruesome crime and an investigator whose job is to save convicts from death. Since the author is an investigator as a side job, the novel seems very well researched and she manages to give the reader an intimate account of the life behind bars waiting to die but. It also delves into the psychology of the people who are dedicating their time to save the “monsters” the society wants to get rid of.
“Inside, the lies you tell become the person you become. On the outside, sun and reality shrink people back to their actual size. In here, people grow into their shadows.”
The author blends beautiful poetic writing with realism and with a stroke of magic. The result is a touching and atmospheric novel about the roots of crime, a novel about darkness and light. I could not understand how she could write such an “Enchanted” book about such a terrible subject.
When you don’t have a soul, the ideas inside you become terrible things. They grow unchecked, like malignant monsters. You cry in the night because you know the ideas are wrong—you know because people have told you that—and yet none of it does any good. The ideas are free to grow. There is no soul inside you to stop them.” 0062323334
What matters in prison is not who you are but what you want to become. This is the place of true imagination.Rene Denfeld, the author of The Enchanted, has the heart of a warrior and the soul of a poet. She has written a novel about identity, understanding, the roots of crime, the reality of prison life, the possibility for redemption, and the ability of people to use imagination to rise beyond the purely material to the transcendent.
There are three primary and several very strongly written secondary characters whose stories are interwoven. In the death row of a stone prison somewhere in America, a nameless inmate, entombed in a lightless dungeon, has constructed a fantastical appreciation for the world he inhabits, bringing a glorious light into his Stygian darkness.
The most wonderful enchanted things happen here—the most enchanted things you can imagine. I want to tell you while I still have time, before they close the black curtain and I take my final bow.In reading, he has the freedom his external circumstances preclude. And he interprets his surroundings through a magical lens. The rumblings of tectonic activity become golden horses racing underground. He sees small men with hammers in the walls (a particularly Lovecraftian notion) and flibber-gibbets, beings who feed on the warmth of death itself. He visualizes his very sweat rising to join the atmosphere and raining down on China. He is also able to perceive feelings and needs in others, observing from his isolation, and offering a bit of narrator omniscience. That he is able to find enchantment in this darkest of situations is breathtaking. I was reminded, in a way, of Tolkien’s Gollum, the battle between the darkness and the light within a single being. But enchantment is not reserved for the inmate alone.
Rene Denfeld
An investigator, known only as The Lady, is working on the case of a prisoner named York. After being on death row for twelve years, York had decided to abstain from any further appeals. The Lady had been hired by York’s attorneys to look into his case. We follow her as she unearths a horrific past that helps explain how York came to be where and who he is. She has a history of her own that informs her ability to relate to her clients. Once upon a time she needed a redoubt of her own.
What did she think about during those endless hours in the laurel hedge? As a child, she made an imaginary world so real that she could feel and taste it today. Sometimes she would imagine that she and her mom lived on a magical island where the trees dripped fruit. Other times they traveled all over the world, just the two of them, like the best of buddies. In all the stories her mom was whole and she was safe. When she left the laurel hedge, she would bend the thick green leaves back, to hide where she had been. And when she came back the next day, crawling with a sandwich she had made of stale bread with the mold cut off, and hardened peanut butter from the jar, the magic would be waiting for her.She has enchantment in her adult life as well, while pursuing her investigation, as she is dazzled by some of the natural beauty she encounters.
A fallen priest tends to the spiritual needs of the inmates, but he guards a secret that he desperately needs to confess. While he offers what comfort he can to the inmates, who can really see him? Who can forgive him?
Much of this novel is about seeing and being seen, of crime, punishment and forgiveness. The Lady’s role is to see the prisoners, see their history, see what lies beneath the awful exterior. She is respected and admired, but not much seen herself. Many of the inmates and guards get by precisely because they succeed in remaining unseen. Prison is a dangerous place in which to be seen. Those who see might use that vision for dark purposes.
Denfeld lifts a wet rock to reveal the maggot-ridden structure of unofficial prison governance, the corruption and cruelty that permeates this world, even with a fair warden nominally in charge. Corrupt guards ally with brutish alpha inmates for their mutual gain. There is considerable detail about prison life, including such things as why metal food trays are used instead of plastic, how the bodies of the deceased are handled, what events are considered disruptive and what are considered ameliorative, and even some history of the prison, including reasons for elements of its design. She also looks through the eyes of the warden and the guards, offering keen insight.
The story lines include learning what The Lady discovers as she looks into York’s past, following the travails of a new, young, white-haired prisoner, seeing how corruption in the prison operates, and accumulating bits of the nameless prisoner’s story.
There are indeed monsters inside the stone walls, as there are monsters without, both drawn to the despoiling of innocence and beauty. But in this pit of ultimate despair, where all hope is lost, there is magic of another sort. Life may be harsh and death may be near, but welcoming the golden subterranean steeds, attending to the little men with hammers, imagining elements of one’s self traversing the planet, traveling along with the characters in a book, seeing, really seeing others, can lift one beyond the cares of the physical world.
Can there be redemption for the horrific crimes these condemned men have committed? Should they die for their crimes, whether they want to or not? Might it be a harsher punishment, even crueler, to keep them alive?
Denfeld has a considerable history. She is an investigator for death-row inmates, and thus the model for The Lady. Her knowledge of the prison world is well applied here. She wrote a piece for the New York Times Magazine on the impact on children of being raised by cognitively impaired parents, a subject that is significant in the story. In addition, her 2007 book, All God’s Children informs her knowledge of the often violent world of street families, young criminals in particular. She is also an amateur boxer. I would not mess with her.
This is simply one of the most moving books I have ever read. Not only is the material heart-breaking, but the language Denfeld uses in her descriptions, the gentle magic of the imagination with which she imbues some of her characters is poetic and stunning.
I hear them, the fallen priest and the lady. Their footsteps sound like the soft hush of rain over the stone floors. They have been talking, low and soft, their voices sliding like a river current that stops outside my cell. When I hear them talk, I think of rain and water and crystal-clear rivers, and when I hear them pause, it is like a cascade of water over falls.While there is enough darkness in The Enchanted to fill a good-size dungeon, it is the moments of light, the beauty of language and imagination, and the triumph of spirit that will cast a spell over you that will last until you shuffle off this mortal coil.
Published
----------Hardcover - 3/4/2014
----------Trade paperback - 3/4/2015
This review was originally posted November 4, 2013
=============================EXTRA STUFF
The author’s personal, Twitter, and Facebook pages
Interviews
-----with Jane Eaton Hamilton
-----Denfeld and author Stephanie Feldman talk with each other about genre - Writing to genre stinks: Two debut novelists on the hard line between fantasy and realism — and why it doesn’t make sense - on Salon.com
Items of interest
-----2/11/2015 - The long list was announced today for The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and NonFiction and The Enchanted was on it.
-----August 11, 2017 - NY Times - GR friend Andrea clued me in to this very moving piece by Denfeld on adopting her own kids, another form of the heroism that is her life - Four Castaways Make a Family
-----October 2, 2019 - Crimereads.com - Denfeld’s close call - MUST READ!!! - The Green River Killer and Me
Other Denfeld books I have read and reviewed
-----2019 - The Butterfly Girl (Naomi Cottle #2)
-----2017 - The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle #1) 0062323334 This book just kicked me in the emotions. 0062323334 Been thinking about this book a lot since I read it. Truly exceptional. And definitely in my top ten ever....
This is truly an enchanted book, a wondrous story. I was thinking yesterday when I finished it that it compared with The Road, which made a big impact on me. That this is without a doubt one of the best books I ever read.
It's a sad, gruesome dark story but also, weirdly enough, one of hope and love. And, beautifully written, a poetic style, which is strangly contrasting with the topic of the story: death row. The story follows a mute inmate on death row who follows and observes developments on death row, which is deep down in the dungeons of the prison building. It's about York, an inmate on death row who wants to die; the lady, who tries to investigate York's case to get him off the death sentence; about a fallen priest in the prison. The lady and the fallen priest fall in love but don't know how to handle it... The boy with the white hair who is abused in prison, and one day decides to take fate in his own hands... The honest and troubled warden, whose wife is dying of cancer...All people with dark happenings in their lives. The mute inmate hears little men in the walls...And then the horses, the golden horses that run and run and run and make a real stampede in the prison at crucial moments. Fantasy or reality?
Well, I cried at the end... like when I finished the Road.
And the book, this is why I always want to read real books. A grainy book, the golden horses lay on top of the print of the cover, the bars are stamped into the book, the pages unevenly cut.. a real live, beautiful book. It will get a top spot on my shelves.
This is what the inside flap of the book says: 'The enchanted is a magical novel about redemption, the poetry that can exist within the unfathomable, and the human capacity to transcend and survive even the most nightmarish reality. Beautiful and unexpected, this is a memorable story.'
Rene Denfeld is an author, journalist and death penalty investigator, that all makes sense.
An extraordinary book. Highly, highly recommended. 0062323334
