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by: Steven Millhauser
List Price: $18.00Amazon.com's Price: $14.04 You Save: $3.96 (22%)Prices subject to change.
Binding: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780787122744
ISBN: 0787122742
Label: Audio Literature
Manufacturer: Audio Literature
Number Of Items: 2
Publication Date: 1999-09
Publisher: Audio Literature
Sales Rank: 2488146
Studio: Audio Literature
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler comes a stunningly original new book set in a Connecticut town over one incredible summer night. The delicious cast of characters includes a band of teenage girls who break into homes and simply leave notes reading 'We Are Your Daughters,' a young woman who meets a phantom lover on the tree swing in her back yard, a beautiful mannequin who steps down from her department store window, and all the dolls 'no longer believed in,' left abandoned in the attic, who magically come to life.
With each new book, Steven Millhauser radically stretches not only the limits of fiction but also of his seemingly limitless abilities. Enchanted Night is a remarkable piece of fiction, a compact tale of loneliness and desire that is as hypnotic and rich as the language Millhauser uses to weave it.
Amazon.com Review:
In novels such as Edwin Mullhouse and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressler, Steven Millhauser conjured fictions as intricate and delicately formed as soap bubbles. True to form, his Enchanted Night seems to want to float right up out of the reader's hand. In its pages are many of Millhauser's trademark fascinations: dolls; mannequins; an obsessed artist; teenage girls meeting secretly at night; and above all, the strangeness lurking just under the surface of everyday life. Set entirely over the course of one night, Enchanted Night follows the denizens of a Connecticut town as they rise from their beds under the light of a brilliant, almost-full moon. Fourteen-year-old Laura Engstrom wakes to a restlessness so fierce that 'if she doesn't do something right away, this second, she'll scream.' Middle-aged Haverstraw (who still lives with his mother) writes for hours in the attic, then leaves to wander the streets. Janet Manning trysts with a lover in her yard, and a band of teenage girls breaks into houses only to leave behind the cryptic message 'WE ARE YOUR DAUGHTERS.' Meanwhile, more magical events are afoot. 'This is the night of revelation. This is the night the dolls wake. This is the night of the dreamer in the attic. This is the night of the piper in the woods,' a chorus of night voices tells us--and a mannequin begins to stir behind a store window, while all over town, abandoned dolls and stuffed animals come slowly to life.
So far, so good. But somewhere along the way, the fairy dust gets a little thick. Is it the chapter in which the moon goddess ravishes virginal Danny? ('Now she strokes the skin of the sleeping one, now she kisses his eyelids closed in dream, now she stiffens his love-lance with her hand.') Or perhaps the appearance of Pan, 'a moon-dancer, a flute-dreamer' making music for the town's children? How about the 'Song of the One-Eyed Cuddly Bear' chapter, which reads, in its entirety, 'I wuv woo. Does woo wuv me?' The only real danger posed in this wispy novella--'the man with shiny black hair' who stalks Laura in order to add her to his 'gallery'--is not actually a threat, we're assured. Millhauser even reduces his bold girl outlaws, with their 'pleasure in violation,' to sipping midnight lemonade with their victim. And what, really, is magic without danger? Decoration, mostly, though there's nothing particularly wrong with that--just nothing particularly urgent either. None of which is to say that there aren't moments of startling beauty in Enchanted Night. There is no stylist more graceful than Millhauser at his best, and here he writes movingly about the formless yearnings of adolescence and the mortal sweetness of sex. Yet even the prose can't quite animate his novella. In the end, Enchanted Night is a rarefied aesthetic experience that asks for very little back. --Mary Park
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - I hated to see it end
I read it while washing dishes, folding laundry, on my breaks, and even though I didn't want it to end, I couldn't stop reading. It's a beautiful, stylized read that lilts and flows. I was left starstruck.
One hundred percent recommended.
Rating: - Dreamy nocturnal escape
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. ... Read More
Rating: - A charming and imaginative tale
One enchanted night, under a full moon, the loners come out to walk in
the moonlight. The mournful music of a flute calls to children, who
leave their homes and walk into the woods. Dolls long forgotten come
alive and begin to dance, and a mannequin walks out of a store window
and joins a male admirer for a stroll beside the railroad tracks. This
is a short, fanciful tale about magical things than happen under the
full moon when lonely people go out to seek companionship. ... Read More
Rating: - Enjoy the language and the weave ... not the plot
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 ... Read More
Rating: - A Great Introductory Novella to Milhauser's Bizarre World
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 ... Read More
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