5 stars for The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld.
This is an overdue post. I meant to write my review and post it right after reading, but as usual, things do not always turn out the way we want it, and so, this turns out to be a really late post.
The Enchanted is a dark story about men on the row waiting to die and a woman who is assigned the job of death penalty investigator. Though the tale borders on the theme of death and can be unsettling at times, it is a joy to read this book as it is filled with lyrical descriptions of this so-called enchanted place. To quote "When you walk on death row, you look for the light. Any light." The writer also expressed emotions in an an imaginative and beautiful way. To quote "the sound of freedom is like the wind in the trees, the splash of water hitting the pavement, the gentle caress of rain on your face and the sound of laughter in the open air." The books talks about death, not just the dead but a deeper kind of melancholy about what happens when a person dies. To quote "How odd it is, that the dead weigh more than the living. You would think it would be the opposite, but it isn't. I think it is because souls give bodies lightness and air. When the soul leaves, the body has nothing left and is desperate to return to the earth. That's why it's so heavy."
The story is brilliantly crafted with the first person narrator as the fly on the wall - the quiet unnoticed-by-all observer that sees and hears everything and lives to tell the story of what goes behind the stone walls of the prison dungeon. He is the all-seeing eyes of the inmates, guards, wardens, the priest, and the lady. Ironically, the inmates are the ones with names such as York, Striker, Arden. The rest of the characters are given generic names such as the priest, the lady, the warden.
Death penalty investigation is labour intensive as it takes months to locate ancient records, to track down witnesses from decades before, to uncover the truth of a crime. There is much mystery lurking behind the inmates awaiting execution and the author knows how to get the reader hooked with delicious anticipation by peeling off the layers piece by piece to get the truth out.
The story builds steadily and the plot - I won't say it thickens, because to me, that is not exactly what happens - develops in its own unique way. I savor every drop of word that forms sentences to bring to life a whole new sensation of reading.
A powerful and enchantingly beautiful novel.