The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld – 224 pages
Book Blurb:
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, honor and corruption-ultimately revealing shocking secrets of her own.
My Review: 4 stars
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Full disclosure here: This is lyrically written dark piece of literary fiction. For the reader who loves the written word and how it can be manipulated to be beautiful in the darkest ways; this book is for you. The omniscient point of view was well done here and it’s best not to question why one of the inmates, also the narrator, has this ability. Very few names are revealed and most of everyone’s inner thoughts are still brought to the page. The narrator brings us damaged characters and a literary foil between the lawyer and an inmate who suffered similarly, yet have profound differences in their outcome. Symbolism, use of metaphor and magical imaginations are woven throughout the book. This would be an English lit professor’s dream, you’ll note how many ‘quote’s I liked’ there are! Overall, this is a well-executed (no pun intended) novel, but not for the faint of heart.
Quotes I liked:
The library became my sanctuary. I loved the ways the precious stories took shape but always had room to be read again. I became fascinated with how writers did that. How did they make a story feel so complete and yet so open-ended? It was like painting a picture that changed each time you looked at it.”
– “I would think for hours how strange it was that some parts of words are silent, just like some parts of our lives. Did the people who wrote the dictionaries decide to mirror language to our own lives, or did it just happen that way?”
– “She thinks about how sad it is that we remember the killers and not their victims. What if the world forgot Hitler and remembers all the names of his victims? What if we immortalized the victims?”
– “Our doors must be fashioned out of desire. But maybe doors made of wishes are stronger than steel.”
– “Some ideas need to stay silent inside me, like the letters inside some words.”
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