The Enchanted
Ratings22
Average rating4.2
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. A female investigator 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, and reveals shocking secrets of her own.
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I sat in the parking lot several times just to listen more to this book. I can't describe it better than the blurb....it was very good at making me picture a scene vividly and interestingly. (I often skip the lengthy descriptions most books need).
Would recommend it.
The story reads like a grim, modern-day fairy tale.
It's partly narrated by a mute death row inmate who has retreated into the world of books and imagines golden horses running deep under the earth, miniature men wielding tiny hammers and clay bodied flibber-gibbets. It's his way out past the horrors of his previous deeds that even in the prison world of rape and murder remain unspoken.
The story follows the case of a death penalty investigator (author Rene Denfeld herself is a death row investigator) working to free a condemned man who simply wants to die. It could be irredeemably dark or sentimentally maudlin but manages to skirt the fine line for most of the narrative.
It's a short little book written beautifully, despite its at times brutal content, with a style I didn't expect from a prison drama.
