Rene Denfield, The Enchanted ** 1/2

The Enchanted is well written, but I feel like there's a fatal mismatch between its form and content. The story takes place in a dilapidated old prison and follows a death row investigator hired to help inmates escape execution. The narrator is an inmate with selective mutism who views the story though the prism of his madness and the books he reads. His perspective imbues everything with wonder and enchantment, making the story sound like a fable. The main characters don't get names; they are just the lady, the fallen priest, the warden.

The author has worked as a death row investigator, and it shows. The best aspect of the book is the details about life in prison. But her goal is to celebrate "the human capacity to transcend even the most nightmarish reality," so the realistic details get overlaid with luminous mumbo-jumbo.

The yard smells when it rains in the summer... and I think about each clod of mud and how it contains the history of the world: shards of mica and stone, glossy ribbons of clay too faint to see, the arm and leg of Eve, the pulsating pull of Adam... With every exhalation, I find a way out of this enchanted place.

I also question Denfield's choice of narrator. She probably had in mind Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but our unnamed narrator has no way to know (or understand) most of what he describes.

P.S. I bought The Enchanted along with Boy, Snow, Bird and The People in the Trees from the "3-for-2" table at Powell's Books. Coincidentally, all three have female authors and sprinkle elements of fantasy over basically realistic premises. The Enchanted was the weakest of the three, so I'll consider it to be the one I got for free.