The Enchanted

Sad, haunting, and beautiful.

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.

I was enchanted by a novel about death row, about wounded souls and death and sorrow. This book is magical and disturbing and well-written yet sometimes very hard to read.