The Enchanted
A Novel
Book - 2014
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Quotes
Add a Quote"Men who have not been violated don’t understand what it is like to have the edges of your body blurred—to feel that every inch of your skin is a place where fingers can press, that every hole and orifice is a place where others can put parts of their bodies. When your body stops being corporeal, your soul has no place to go, so it finds the next window to escape."
"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."
"Ideas are powerful things; we should take more care with them. I know there are some who would disagree - those who think ideas are like food they can taste and spit out if they don't like it. But ideas are stronger than that. You can get a taste of an idea inside you, and the next thing you know, it won't leave. Until you do something about it."
"They can keep men in here, under lock and key, deep in the dungeon until the final moments of their lives, so that men like York and me will never taste the rain. But they cannot keep us from passing our condensation on to the sky. They cannot keep us from raining down in China."
"Back so long ago, when they built this enchanted place, they killed men in three ways: They waited for them to die, they worked them to death, and they hanged them.
Not much has changed. Instead of working men to death, there is a slow starvation of the body and soul. And instead of rope, they use a machine."
Comment
Add a CommentAt once beautiful and horrifying, absorbing and disturbing. This isn't an enjoyable read but one that really stirs up feelings and questions.
Amazing! A dark story of beauty and hope, told from the most dismal and corrupt of places, with people who've suffered the ugliest and cruelest of backgrounds.
Two people, similar backgrounds, different futures. What decides our futures?
This is a beautifully told story. There's pain throughout, yet it's a story of hope, too. And peace. There's peace in this story.
Death Row....not a place that would inspire such a lovely story, yet here it is.
Haunting, intense, & dark. The writing is strong and I thought the ending was very well done.
Denfeld’s writing is lyrically exquisite, full of poetic imagery, and jarringly juxtaposed to the horrors of life on prison’s death row. I stand in awe of this writer’s gift to create a compassionate and triumphant story as it explores the darkness of mental illness and the soul-crushing environment of the enchanted prison. Not for the faint of heart, yet full of heart feints.
Excellently written. I no longer think about prisoners as deserving of being treated inhumanly and disrespectfully. That surprised me.It changed me.
This is one of those books that I found I couldn't put down until I finished it. Very well written and had a lyrical quality to it. Definitely a fresher perspective than most novels.
Haunting, lyrical, and original. What a beautifully written, emotionally stunning story. Easily one of my favorite books, though the subject matter isn't for the faint of heart. Above all, a story of loneliness, isolation, and empathy.
One of my favorite books. Magical, perfect, sad, hopeful, humane. I've read it twice already.
This book helped me to read about things and to think about situations that I usually have a hard time taking in. In the book I am able to feel empathy for people who are seen as monsters and who have done terrible things and have had terrible things done to them. It is written in a way that enables these people to be seen as somehow human, and although tragic, there seems to be hope as well
Magical reality set in a state penitentiary, told by a man on death row. Disturbing and wonderful all at the same time.