Rene Denfeld - The Enchanted

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Quite exceptional

I thought this was an exceptionally good book. It is profound, haunting and original and is also extremely gripping and readable.

The story is told by a prisoner on Death Row, and it is a remarkable narrative voice. It is somehow both simple and poetic and gives an exceptionally perceptive portrait of this damaged man and some of the things which formed him. The narrative of the book is extremely atmospheric and almost hallucinatory at times; it is a remarkable portrait of a mind. To give a slight flavour of the book, during a brilliant, haunting passage about what happened to him and the idea of remorse he says, "My soul left me when I was six. It flew away past a flapping curtain over a window. I ran after it, but it never came back. It left me alone on wet stinking mattresses. It left me alone in the choking dark. It took my tongue, my heart and my mind." I found that "I ran after it, but it never came back," quite heartbreaking even in this man who has done terrible things, and the book is full of such things.

The book is beautifully structured and crafted, and prison life is brilliantly evoked. Violence and death are always present although their actual occurrences are almost never described, and Rene Denfeld manages to convey a haunting atmosphere of threat and sometimes horror as a result. Only prisoners are named; others are called the lady, the priest, the warden and so on in a subtle inversion of normal perception. The lady is a death penalty investigator whose job it is to discover grounds for mitigation of the death penalty for the inmates whose cases she works on. Denfeld is herself a death penalty investigator so she knows this world intimately and gives an insightful, knowledgeable and deeply thought-out picture of the world and its inhabitants. It is anything but a polemic, and she paints subtle portraits of the death row investigator who has doubts about her work, the warden who believes profoundly in the death penalty but is a deeply humane and compassionate man toward his inmates and others, and so on. It is exceptionally thought-provoking and presents no easy answers.

I found the whole book utterly involving, and the final sixty pages or so were so completely gripping and profoundly moving that I was left in a state of emotional turmoil. Denfeld manages to convey understanding and compassion for these "monsters" (and some of their acts really were monstrous) and even manages to find some redemptive notes, without ever excusing or sympathising with what they did or forgetting the terrible grief and damage they caused to so many others. It is a remarkable achievement which conveys above all the overwhelming sadness of it all.

This is one of the finest books I have read for some time and I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes an intelligent, thought-provoking and gripping read. It is quite exceptional.