Review: The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld

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.


Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication date: 6 Oct 2020

*** Favourite Quote 1 ***

I'm saying hopeful magic. I don't know this inmate. But I imagine he knows magic, if he is reading books. The book itself doesn't matter. It's that he found another world in it.

*** Favourite Quote 2 ***

.. time is more than counting days. On the outside, people think clocks tell them the time. They set an alarm for work and wake up to a blinking light that says six a.m. They look to an office wall to tell them if it is time to go home.

The truth is, clocks don't tell time. Time is measured in meaning.

I better get up for work or It's time to feed the baby. Or That was the year I got cancer or That is the day we celebrate your birthday. Or Remember when our father died or Let's remember to plant turnips this spring.

It is meaning that drives most people forward into time, and it is meaning that reminds them of the past, so they know where they are in the universe.

When time no longer exists, you don't care about getting up, you don't think about birthdays, you don't think back to people you lost. You float free in the universe, untethered to anyone or anything. Your heart is empty, and because your heart is empty, you have no time. You have no place in the universe.

*** Favourite Quote 3 ***

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 Enchanted
Rene Denfeld

@}--->>--->>-----

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.

*Blurb from Goodreads*

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