This book The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld must be read twice: the first, to pace with it; the second, to savor it.
At the risk of sounding cliché, do not judge the book by its cover. The bars which cage the golden horses on the cover should be a dead give away. The author uses the psychological approach to get to know the darkest and the deepest of the misunderstood. The protagonist researching on that borderline, an event that forced a person to step into the wild and abandon his humanity, as unconscious as he might be.
It is full of irony. The voice of the book is from one who is totally soundless. His selective mutism encapsulates him into a world of imagination, both vivid and profound, which continues to the books on which he laid his emaciated fingers. Bits and bits of his life are described all throughout the pages, till that one fine day at age 18 where he rummaged through the insides of a baby in search for that lost soul he claimed losing during his formative years.
The nameless lady investigator, and her client York, a death row inmate. Their lives were sewn in the same pagttern, of different colors of thread. There were some events in their lives when they got intertwined, metaphorically, at least, until that stroke that one did to turn right. The other, otherwise.
The priest and the warden, the former being fallen and the latter falling. The priest is imprisoned by his unexpressed desires, and the warden suppressing his to normalise his daily living.
There are prisons inside prisons. There are walls inside free men. The book teaches us the value of a story each human person carries. Very few of us can dive into the heart of the prosecuted, immerse into their lives, and get to know them from within. It is harder especially if taken into account the incomprehensible act committed. The story echoes the Freudian psychology, how childhood is spent on the basis of sexuality, can shape their adulthood. Before everything else, they were juvenile themselves, with the same needs, the same wants, the same desires. Until, at a young age, they have reached their climax.
The heinous acts could be a statement of a desire to be seen. It is at the brink of desperation that drives the frustration within. We all have a story to tell. Some of us have options to express them; some may have not. To feel the warmth of existence is what the lady gives her clients, and unknowingly, even to those she does not intend to.
The book does not justify inhumane acts. Instead, it digs into the beginning. It unwraps the how's of all its forms, so a glimpse of a who may be understood. So a peak of a why may be reasoned out. So the gift of existence may be endorsed, even at the last moments of their lives. These walking deads die content, knowing that the true version of their story is construed and locked in the heart of the lady. Knowing that they mattered to someone is the closure they hopelessly aim.
