Rating: 
Summary: The night is beautiful.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The night is beautiful.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Modernizing magic
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic and Magic Story
Review: I learn many things of my life by reading this novel. That is dream, love, ego, soul of human beings. Now we live in the age of Internet. This times make troubles and conflict between I and another I(doppelganger). This novel expressed that thema.
Rating: 
Summary: Real Vapid Night
Review: I picked up this book because I was 'enchanted' by Martin Dressler. I also read the admiring reviews in NYTBR and Washington Post Book World. What a disappointment this number was! Ten little tales shuffled together at random. Patches of wonderful language interposed with lots of white space. This novella doesn't add up to a Twilight Zone episode, and there's not even a narrator to give you the moral of the story at the end. You don't suppose Steven could have put this together in a hurry for a little cash, do you?
Rating:
Summary: Real Vapid Night
Review: I picked up this book because I was 'enchanted' by Martin Dressler. I also read the admiring reviews in NYTBR and Washington Post Book World. What a disappointment this number was! Ten little tales shuffled together at random. Patches of wonderful language interposed with lots of white space. This novella doesn't add up to a Twilight Zone episode, and there's not even a narrator to give you the moral of the story at the end. You don't suppose Steven could have put this together in a hurry for a little cash, do you?
Rating: 
Summary: Gossamer Delicacy and Heady Sensuality
Review: I'm a fan of Millhauser thanks to Martin Dressler, but this was not one of my favorite works. Sure, there are beautiful poetic sections weaved in and out of these night musings. Many of his recurrent themes, (moonlight, a mannequin who gets up and wanders around) make there way through these meditations on night and the stories are interwoven. But overall, I found that these little segments don't cohere enough to make this a truly great work. Full of little gems, to be sure, but more like a literary experiment than a novella to be savored. I'm glad he continues to experiment and push the bounds of fiction, but I found this small volume a bit disappointing overall.
Rating: 
Summary: magical in parts, but doesn't add up
Review: I'm a fan of Millhauser thanks to Martin Dressler, but this was not one of my favorite works. Sure, there are beautiful poetic sections weaved in and out of these night musings. Many of his recurrent themes, (moonlight, a mannequin who gets up and wanders around) make there way through these meditations on night and the stories are interwoven. But overall, I found that these little segments don't cohere enough to make this a truly great work. Full of little gems, to be sure, but more like a literary experiment than a novella to be savored. I'm glad he continues to experiment and push the bounds of fiction, but I found this small volume a bit disappointing overall.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoy the language and the weave ... not the plot
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoy the language and the weave ... not the plot
Review: 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.
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