The Enchanted audiobook

This book just kicked me in the emotions.

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 DenfeldAn 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 - 3/4/2015This review was originally posted November 4, 2013=============================EXTRA STUFFThe author’s personal, Twitter, and Facebook pagesInterviews-----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.comItems 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 MeOther Denfeld books I have read and reviewed-----2019 - The Butterfly Girl (Naomi Cottle #2)-----2017 - The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle #1)

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 (view spoiler)[although you'll figure it out long before the big "reveal." (hide spoiler)] 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!["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>

“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

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.

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.

Thank You to the many friends on Goodreads who read this book before me....especially to 'Doug'. When I read his review yesterday... I said..."That's it, enough already". I picked up the paperback copy which I own - and started reading! It's MORE than what I expected ... IT REALLY IS *THAT SPECIAL*!!!!!!When a mute nameless inmate first arrived at the prison ....( we learn he is on death row), he was pretty much illiterate ....but the library became his sanctuary. "I loved the ways the precious stories took shape but always had room to be ready again. I became fascinated with how writers did that. How do they make a story feel so complete and yet so open-minded? It was like painting a picture that changed each time you look at it."The book "The White Dawn", was comforting to him ... which he read over and over. When he first started reading, he didn't know how to sound out many of the words: "Sioux, paisley, ruche, Obsolete, rubric, crux. How do you say those words? How do they sound when others say them? Are they as pretty as a sound inside my head?"He tried endlessly to say the word 'Sioux' ...He was still not sure how it sounds. "Is the X silent?" In the end he decided it really didn't matter. Books brought brilliance to his life. They brought understanding. "Life is a story". "Everything that is happened and will happen to me is all part of the story of this enchanted place – – all the dreams and visions and understandings that come to me in my dungeon cell."Our nameless-first-person narrator has a vivid imagination - lots of magical activity going on inside his head. ( creative descriptions of sounds -miniature men with tiny hammers in the walls- horses gallop free, etc.). Other inmates are: York, Arden, Conroy, Risk, white hair boy, the warden, the Priest, and *The Lady*. *The Lady*, is the death penalty investigator. Much of the story is told from her point of view in third person narrative. Early on in this story, I couldn't help but wonder what might be her inspiration for this job she has chosen. Then...we see her remembering back to her childhood ... and I began to understand her amazing compassion for the inmates. "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 send the thick green leaves back, to hide where she had been. And when she came back the next day, crawling with the sandwich she had made of stale bread with the mold cut off and harden peanut butter from the jar, and magic world would be waiting for her."The imagery and prose is lustrous. Yet at the same time - the author has us take a deep look inside the walls of prison life. The place is old and filthy. We see both sides of the coin: The horrific crimes that inmates have committed...and the indignity, humiliation, and abuse the authorities afflict on them. Parts of this book was really agonizing to read. Yet it was absolutely beautiful to see how the author, Rene Denfeld, gave these men on death row a sense of humanity. "The entire enchanted place sighs with sadness". HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

“For us, time doesn’t exist. The measurements of life – birth, death, loss, marriage, love, lust, happiness – have no meaning in this dungeon. Time passes here, but it doesn’t count. I could have a clock, but what would the dial tell me? Nothing. 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. At least I used to think this way. Only listening to the lady and the priest has made me feel a little different. I think more about time now. Not for me but for the lady.”So says the narrator of this very powerful and intense book set in one of the darkest of places – the death row of an antiquated stone prison. Told through the first-person “voice” of a condemned man who has committed heinous and indescribable crimes, The Enchanted is simultaneously heartrending, hopeful and beautiful. As one would expect, the subject matter is often unsettling; however, the author does not go over the top with extreme and graphic images. Denfeld conveys to the reader the very real and ugly side to lives filled with physical, sexual, and mental abuse, the consequences of such horrors, and ultimately the atrocities of prison life itself; but she does so in an unusually quiet manner. The Lady, unnamed in this novel, is an attorney-hired investigator tasked with searching for information that could save the lives of death row inmates once their execution dates have been set. Sometimes successful and occasionally not, the Lady is confronted with a most difficult and rare case – that of York, who does not wish to be saved from death. Through her research, the Lady again confronts the misery of her own past which is not so different from that of York’s. This gives the Lady a unique perspective and perhaps an additional passion to help York and men like him. Her inclination to truly listen helps York open up and speak to her. “The words tumble out as rough as rocks, but they are soon worn smooth, and more and more he hears himself talking – blessed surcease, a person just to listen to me – and the vowels round and the consonants grow into planets that become the universe that expands in the light in her dark eyes. She hears me, he thinks wildly – she hears me.”Throughout the novel, the reader also feels the raw pain of other damaged individuals such as the fallen priest in need of love and forgiveness, the white-haired boy who is a victim of the system and a recipient of the awful abuse within the prison walls, and the warden tormented by the anguish of his wife’s illness and impending death. And then, of course, we are always brought back to the narrator and his own inner turmoil. Described as a monster as a result of his crimes, the narrator manages the confusion and heartache of his past and the fears of everyday prison life by reading books and creating an imaginative world full of “enchantment”, running horses with “gold-flecked nostrils and bronzed skin”, tiny men with hammers within the walls, and other such fantasies. The reader in me could not help but delight in and identify with his love for books. “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.” In a sense, books were his salvation. But, I think too, that the Lady was his salvation as well. Through his eyes we see her develop a relationship with the fallen priest, we see her deal with her own demons and nightmares of her past, and like the narrator, we gain a sense of hope that one can rise above the unthinkable miseries of a damaging childhood. “The lady is like me in many ways. Serpents crawl inside her. She is deathly afraid that others will see them. She is afraid, and yet she wants the priest to see inside her and accept the monsters that wrap around the secret, pure part of her – the part she managed to save, miraculously, that so many of us have lost. She knows the monsters are there and yet wants to be seen. Her courage frightens and amazes me. It makes me hopeful for her. It makes me crave happiness for her. Is that what you call love? Is that what you call hope?” Thought-provoking, simply but hauntingly beautiful, and with a perfect ending, The Enchanted is one you should not miss. I highly recommend this book that gets 4.5 stars from me.

Call me crazy, but when I see golden horses in bars with a title like this, I think "carousel."When I get "magical realism that takes place on the death row of a prison, narrated by an inmate who can see the fantastical creatures within its walls, describing the relationship between an investigator and a priest, a warden and a convict, a man on death row who is ready to die and the people who have let him go already," I am surprised, yes.But very, very pleasantly surprised.I expected a little Morgenstern-esque fantasy setting action, and instead I received a reminder of our shared humanity, of the good where you least expect it, an insistence that we are all people, that we deserve grace and dignity, that even when we fail to show it we have worthiness and morality within us.What a thing.Bottom line: My best surprise read of the year.-------------------this is a stunner (in that i was surprised by it because it was not what i expected, and in every other way).review to come / 4 stars-------------------do you ever accidentally go into a book blind?in other words, turns out i had no idea what this book was about.clear ur shit prompt 3: a book you were recommendedfollow my progress here-------------------everyone has a different soulmate. for example, mine is magical realism

What an extraordinary novel. Actually, I've never read anything like it. It has a fantastical feel to it, yet it is not fantasy as a genre. I'm finding it hard to relate a story that felt as if I was in an enchanted place, and yet is a story of prison, death, death row, a woman who comes to exchange death for life terms, and a priest who is disgraced. This prison is no ordinary prison though, it was built long, long ago, and has the feel of an ancient castle.The first sentence begins, "This is an enchanted place. Others don't see it, but I do." This is the voice of our narrator. He is a man on death row himself, one we rarely catch scant glimpses of. We know he is somewhat deformed, either through childhood abuse, or prison life itself. But it is he, the "knower" of this place, and he sees, and feels it all.The exquisite writing of Rene Denfeld is like no other. To provide a taste from the first paragraph, and a clearer picture of our narrator, she writes, "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 button...urns of the dead spill ashes outside to feed the soil under the grasses, which wave to the sky...I see the golden horses as they run deep under the earth, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs. I see where the small men hide with their tiny hammers, and how the fibber-giblets dance while the oven slowly ticks."Denfeld can turn a striking phrase into a chilling experience. But, this novel is not filled with misery. It questions the ultimate meaning of life and death. What is the incessant pull towards life, or even death? Who really "sees" us in this desert we call life? What can truly be forgiven? This book left me with many essential questions.To be mesmerized by a novel is quite a feat, and Rene Denfeld has done that for me with perfection.

The Enchanted is not your traditional fairy tale. It is deep, dark and disturbing, and takes place on death row. It's what is created to sustain an inmate's sanity and survival. It's a glimpse into the human side of monsters who have done unthinkable horrors to others. It's a story of hope even as death waits. This is a read I found myself putting down frequently to contemplate. Denfeld manages to do the unthinkable: have us feel compassion for men we consider evil. 5 stars and a must read.