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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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Summary: We are such stuff as dreams are made on....
Review: 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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Summary: A Great Introductory Novella to Milhauser's Bizarre World
Review: 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.
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