[simpleazon-image align=”left” asin=”0062285505″ locale=”us” height=”500″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41pGICYGCFL.jpg” width=”339″][simpleazon-link asin=”0062285505″ locale=”us”]The Enchanted: A Novel[/simpleazon-link] by Rene Denfeld
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
So much depth packed into less than 300 pages; a book unlike anything I’ve ever read. I was immediately enraptured by the narrator’s voice, visions and observations. The imagery is ripe for the imagination, and the reader quickly becomes consumed by the “enchanted” place. Chilling, gut-wrenching, gripping, and yet, somehow, inexplicably full of wonder. Both horrifying and hopeful. Poetic. Weaves a spell over the reader that transcends the story, the characters, and the death row setting to a place that is, well, enchanted.

Quotes:

“On the outside, sun and reality shrink people back to their actual size. In here, people grow into their shadows” (p. 3).

“…if there are things inside us too tiny to see, might there be things outside us too big to believe” (p. 49)?

“Death was his safety net. It was the answer to all the inner confusion, to the secret knowledge of the unspeakable harm he caused others. It was his way out of whatever hell he lives in” (p. 197).