"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." 
 This beautiful little novel is not for the faint of heart. There is not a single warm or fuzzy feeling to be found within it's pages. But if you want to feel intense anguish, distress, anger, loathing, empathy, horror, or awe you should read this immediately. 
 Narrated by an unnamed inmate awaiting execution in a high security stone prison, The Enchanted follows a variety of characters: said unnamed narrator, the Lady--a death row investigator who works to uncover one inmates past in order to give him a chance to evade the death penalty, a fallen priest who works at the prison, the prison's warden, whose wife is dying of cancer, a corrupt prison guard, and a teenage boy who has just begun to serve his sentence. You might think that all of these characters jumbled together into a mere 230 pages would make for a mess, but that is not at all the case. Denfeld dives right in with these characters. She doesn't dilly-dally in her character building. She gives you brief and forceful flashes of their lives, which is all you need. She also never answers all of your questions, but in this case the old adage rings true: Some things are better left unsaid. 
 This book poses the important questions while managing to be hauntingly beautiful. Denfeld is a master of diction and description. Ever few sentences you encounter a turn of phrase that takes your breath away. Her brand of magical realism is stark and refreshing and not over-played. All the while she asks us what it is to live, what defines guilt or innocence, to what extent are we products of our environment, how our lives can be shaped by so many unseen forces, and how all those forces determine how we interact with the world. The juxtaposition between beautifully crafted language and scenes that will turn your stomach (think: rape, murder, child molestation, etc.) creates such a startlingly intense platform on which Denfield asks the reader who the real monsters are. 
 Denfield's story is going to stay with me for a long time. Easily one of the best books I've read this year so far. I am a little bit ruined for having read it. 
 "The books brought brilliance to my life, and they brought an understanding: Life is a story. Everything that has happened and will happen to me is all part of the story of this enchanted place--all the dreams and visions and understandings that come to me in my dungeon cell. The books helped me see that truth is not in the touch of the stone but in what the stone tells you. 
 And the stones tell me so much. But if I get some things wrong, then please forgive me. This place is too enchanted to let the story go untold."