7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gossamer Delicacy and Heady Sensuality, October 19, 2000
By A Customer
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."
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
We are such stuff as dreams are made on...., January 2, 2000
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.
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