Customer Reviews

Enchanted Night: A Novella

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2 star:		(1)
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A beautifully descriptive novella which washed over me effortlessly. A few cliched strands couldn't ruin the emotive tone set by Millhauser. It reads like a short dream you wish could go on forever. Readers tip: Plan your time to read this in one go as it's rhythm is vital to the overall effect.

Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser successfully marries the marvelous to the mundane in his shimmering novella, Enchanted Night. Enchanted Night is the thought chronicle of dozens of insomniacs in a Connecticut seaside suburb: three teenage boys who are attempting to break into a library; a music-mesmerized army of children; a pair of teenaged lovers on the brink of intimacy; an ominous "man with shiny black hair," and a strange band of girls who break into houses only to steal meaningless knick knacks and who leave behind notes proclaiming, WE ARE YOUR DAUGHTERS. These are the human insomniacs. This is Millhauser, so, of course, there are others.

There are the dolls, "not dolls in the freshness of their youth...but old, abandoned, dolls, no longer believed in," and there is a chic department store mannequin who "dreams of release, of the dropping of her guard, of the voluptuous fall into motion."

These "moon-mad, summer-looney" characters have intentions that range from friendly to sinister to bizarre. Among the bizarre are Haverstraw, a thirty-nine year old man still living with his mother who spends his time working on "an immense project, an experiment in memory," and Mrs. Kasco, the sixty-one year old woman who regrets not having seduced Haverstraw when he (and she) were younger. Perhaps it is not too late; these two strange-but-wonderful characters meet each night for conversation and wrangling over matters as far-out as how "memory keeps turning into conversation."

Overall, Millhauser is himself in this book: masterful, erudite, inventive, original, poetic, restrained. There are, however, a few moments when we have to stop, shake our heads and wonder, "What happened?" The most glaring instance encompasses the seven words that make up "Song of the One-Eyed Cuddly Bear."

Millhauser's prose is...Millhauser: poetic, lyrical, sensual, heady and delicate all at the same time. The entire novella is shot through with the enchantment of a full moon on a warm August night, perfectly alternating gossamer delicacy, heady sensuality and beguiling magic.

For the most part, Enchanted Night works its charm, and, like its characters, we, too, come to dread the sun and instead long for "some unknown place--deeper than dreams, more dangerous than desire."

Calling on Shakespeare, this is a sort of reworking of Midsummer Night's Dream. With short vignettes that convey much more than what is written, Millhauser vividly recounts the magic of summer night. Filled with mythology and fairy tale happenings, this book is so complete as to be visible. There is not a detail missing. It is concentrated and nostalgic, a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Summoning the surreal white light of the past winter solstice moon, and having experienced the page turn of the century in Paris, Moscow, London New York - each like fast forwards and flashbacks to the viewing eye as the day rolled toward the Pacific ending - I found I had saved Steven Millhauser's ENCHANTED NIGHT for an eerily timed moment to savour. If ever there were a collection of images to share at such a promising time this little novella is it. Millhauser has deposited tiny thoughts like interrupted dreams that are so special that momentary awakening only pleads for us to return to the dreams. With an uncanny ecomony of words, a plethora of evocative observations, and a page-turning style of staccato images, he provides just enough literary seduction to allow the reader to fold close the book after a scant 100 odd pages, darken the lamp, and luxuriate in our own moonlight the myriad trails toward conclusions that our own dreams complete. And in Milhauser's far better words....O you who wait: this is the night of the opening of the heart.

This is an extended poem, a brief novella, a parcel of dreamdust to repeatedly read, at night, alone. Or better - to share with another child of the evening.

This quick read wonderfully describes the goings-on one summer night in a Connecticut suburb. There is great attention to detail here, from the reflection of the red and green of the stoplight in a storefront window, to the steaming coffee in thick white cups as heavy as rocks. An extended metaphor of the moon entices throughout, and Millhauser's prose flows so smooth that I'm sure the amount of work that has gone into these 128 pages rival that of much longer works elsewhere. Different in style from his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Martin Dressler," this book is a lesson of beautiful writing.

Millhauser has given shape to the dangerous and delicious longings of the American night, lit them with the transformative light of a full moon, and cast their elusive shadows across the glittering pavement, down the back-alleys, and over the well-tended lawns of an elusive and familiar American town. This is a book that will enter your consciousness like a vivid dream.

Poetic, romantic, funny night of lunar longing for the residents of a suburban Connecticut town. One night with a cast of many intersecting entities including (but not limited to) a 14 year old girl, a mannequin, satyrs, wee children, and a lonely, middled aged man who still lives with Mommy. Oh, and dolls that come alive. Yes, this sounds overwrought and implausible, but the far-fetched is so neatly intertwined with the very believable longings of recognizable, everyday people that it works. There is also plenty of suspense. A beautiful, quick read.

In Enchanted Night, Millhauser has assembled a number of cultural images of the magical moon especially moon and youth, lonely nights etc. In this sense, the book is conventional and predictable. It is in his use of language and the intricate interweaving of stories, that Millhauser is inventive and original. This first several chapters seem unrelated except by time and location. One meets a 14 year old girl leaving a hot bedroom to escape angst. One meets dolls in an attic. One meets an unproductive 40 year old writer wanna be living in his mother's attic. One meets a mannnequin in a store window. A group of teenage girls who get their kicks breaking into homes not to steal but for the adventure of it. A twenty year old woman. In tracing these, and others, throughout the night, the novel slowly shows interconnections that yield a picture of a full town, a town with the average range of people and dreams. As Millhauser develops the interconnections, a reader may easily become distracted by the skill and ease with which it is done. The plot is not sufficient for the suspension of disbelief to eradicate the interest of the craftsmanship.

Millhauser shows a poets comfort with using words as his raw media - the pace of the sentences' rhythm rises and falls with the tension in the scene. The use of detail to create character is superb. Now and then the freshness of an image or a word makes the reader stop and take note. Yet the author sticks to the mundane - a partial roll of LifeSavers as thanks - in a way that makes the "enchanted night" somehow possible in every reader's experience.

This novella tells the story of one peculiar night in a small town that is having difficulty sleeping. Of course there have been other sleepless nights in this small town, but none until this one have been enchanted.

When the people of the town cannot sleep, they wander the streets, thinking that they are alone. Little do they know that the rest of the town is experiencing the same insomnia and are also wandering through the night. A girl longs for her beau to come to her lonely window; he does. A man lusts after a manequin in a window; she comes to life. The Pied Piper leads the children through the woods with his magic flute. A girl who decides to moonbathe in the nude is followed by a lusty man and rescued in the nick of time by a guy who lives in his mother's attic. A band of young female thieves enjoy lemonade in the most unlikely of homes.

The night is so fantastical that perhaps it was just a dream. Whatever it was, it makes for an enjoyable, short read.

This is a slim, gorgeous, simply enjoyable, startling romantic little book about a smattering of everypeople using the night to entertain their deep desires and hidden longings. Simmered in fantasy but with a wispy bedrock of genuine human emotion, this is a must for any Millhauser fan or for those who secretly love that little magic twinge of loneliness you only get after hours.