The Enchanted Book Review

The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"I see the soft-tufted night birds as they drop from the heavens. 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 flibber-gibbets dance while the oven slowly ticks. 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 ."

This book must have been written by a Genius . its the best i read this year .
Maybe ... the best i read in many years .
by the time I put it down I was unable to think about anything else. I sleepwalked through the few last hours , my thoughts were enveloped by the book , i am still trapped in that world , in that unnamed inmate on a death row's head .
since i read The first sentence , "This is an enchanted place. Others don't see it, but I do." , with the voice of our narrator echoing in my head , and i was a goner . This is one of the most touching , haunting , enthralling , dark , intense, gut-wrenching , heart-aching , perplexing and dazzling reads that I have experienced in a very long time. a day has past since i finished it and I am still there, in the dungeons , spellbound by the enchantment , completely transfixed , hold still by my own fascination .
its the story of an inmate on the death row with a crime too horrible to be mentioned , unnamed , undescribed , even we have no idea how many years he spent in that dungeon , he seem to have no idea , too but they seem too many that he lost count , mute since the age of 6 , selective mutism they called it , and we rarely catch scant glimpses of him , we are in his head , he tells his emotions and thoughts , his deep feelings : "I remind myself I am not dust, but I should be. I tell myself I am made of the same cells as life itself even if I am a mistake".
he serves as an omniscient narrator so he tells the stories of the other characters : "the lady" an investigator , a mitigation specialist who lived a tough childhood , "the priest" a fallen priest who is burdened by a secret and the weight of his own guilt , "the warden" with his life afflicted by his wife's illness and the painful weight of the fact that she is to perish from his life only soon , "the white haired boy " a two years prison sentenced boy how faces horrific circumstances and York , a fellow prisoner whose death date is fast approaching .
its a magical reality , our narrator imagine things that none other than him can see , blue tufted birds , golden galloping horses running after every execution silver dust coating their path , tiny men with hammers in the walls, and the creepy flibber-gibbets feeding on the warmth of death itself , moaning the pain of their swollen bellies .

The writing left me speechless , Denfled's exquisite writing is like no other , its unique , i never read anything like this before , there's a deep sense of melancholy to her words , Words that don't cuddle you, words that envelope you , i read wide eyed the whole time , i was charmed , surprised that such a book existed , It made me cry , but cry may be not the word , they were mute non painful tears , maybe its that my eyes watered , and for the first time , i never experienced such a thing before , it wasn't sadness or grief or even happiness , i broke into tears fascinated , its fascination .
and there's a first time for everything . here's a one .
the message of the book is " to understand " , people however bad may have their own reasons , even if the reasons are no excuse but still, just if we knew , if we understood , the synopsis says : "Even monsters need peace. Even monsters need a person who truly wants to listen - to hear - so that someday we might find the words that are more than boxes. Then maybe we can stop men like me from happening... "
many of the most horrible criminals are the subject of their society , Can there be redemption for the horrific crimes these condemned men have committed ? is it execution ? can killing those prevent others from being created ? or do we say born ? which is more correct ?
the book tell us the roots of these behaviors , it doesn't justify them , it just get into the root , inspect the whole image .
and there's the other minor message , that "human can persevere inspite of horrific circumstances" these are the author words on her GR profile .
its that the mind has a way of cloaking the things we find most horrific. it uses imagination to rise beyond the purely material to the otherworldly . It can haze the real world around and take you into a different world to escape the most desperate of situations, leaving some of the terror behind .

I've read this book after reading my friend's Puck review that you can read here , thank u puck this is the second book i read depending on your reviews and find amazing .
I'd recommend this to Everyone , though if you cant handle dark reads this is maybe not for you , but still even despite i , myself , am not a fan of dark books , i was charmed , The Enchanted cast its spell on me , i imagine it would be one of these books that always stays with me , a book to leave an impact in one's life .
The end was as i anticipated it was wounding yet beautiful , the sentimentalism it holds , the heavy melancholy and the beautiful message still served the same way , not stumbling upon its last lines , a perfection till the last word .

And I will go as I have hoped to become : forgotten.




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