Enchanted Night: A Novella
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| Publisher | Crown Publishers |
|---|---|
Publication date | 1999 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 112 |
| ISBN | 978-0609605165 |
Enchanted Night: A Novella is a novella by Steven Millhauser first published in 1999 by Crown Publishers.[1]
The novella is presented in seventy-four titled vignettes.[2]
- Restless
- Chorus of Night Voices
- The Man in the Attic
- The Dream of the Mannequin
- Outlaws
- The Window
- The Piper in the Woods
- On the Hill
- Laura in Moonlight
- A Woman Waiting
- Song of the Field Insects
- Three Young Men
- The Woman Who Lives Alone
- The Moon and the Mannequin
- The Children Wake
- Stillness
- The Man With the Green Eyes
- Haverstraw Speaks
- Chorus of the Night Voices
- The Dolls Wake
- The Swing
- In the Library
- The Man With the Shiny Black Hair
- The Pleasures of Window Gazing
- The Beach on a Summer Night
- Secrets
- The Children Set Forth
- Black Masks
- Laura Follows the Moon
- Con Amour de la Muerte
- The White Flower
- Danny Alone
- Skintight
- Mannequin Mischief
- Words Heard Under the Spruces
- Laura in the Thicket
- Chorus of the Night Voices
- Haverstraw Takes His Leave
- Song of the Field Insects
- How to Live
- The Cricket Bluegrass Band
- Good Night
- Laura Invisible
- Danny in the Back Yard
- Danny's Song to the Moon
- "Visitors in the Night
- Kisses
- The Comb
- Coop Along the Railroad Tracks
- Chorus of the Night Voices
- Pierrot and Columbine
- Haverstraw in Moonlight
- Chorus of Night Voices
- The Children Enter the Woods
- Danny and the Goddess
- Living Room and Moon
- Under the Spruces
- Dance of the Dolls
- Song of the One-eyed Cuddly Bear
- The Garbage Can
- Dark Party
- Pictures in a Gallery
- Coop and his Lady
- An Encounter
- The Piper in the Woods
- Danny Waking
- A Little Change
- Young
- Chorus of Night Voices
- Coop Alone
- The Woman Who Lives Alone Shows a Touch of Cunning
- Haverstraw Walking Home
- Columbine
- Dawn
Plot
The novella is told from a third-person omniscient point-of-view by a reliable narrator.
The story unfolds in a single summer night from around midnight until dawn. The setting is a small American town similar to that which the author grew up, namely Connecticut in the 1950s. The scenes are illuminated by a full moon. The characters include local townspeople as well as non-human figures such as animated mannequins and dolls. The mythical moon-goddess Diana presides over this shadowy domain.[3]
Reception
"For me, there are certainly characters in Enchanted Night, and I take them seriously, but they're rigorously subordinated to the night itself..."—Steven Millhauser in a 2012 personal communication to biographer Earl G. Ingersoll.[4]
Reviewer Isobel Montgomery at The Guardian laments that Millhauser fails to develop his material, such that the effects of the moon on the novella's characters are more "enervating" than enchanting. Montgomery rates the novella as little more than "an exercise in creative writing" by the Pulitzer Prize winning author.[5]
New York Times reviewer Tobin Harshaw detects a shift away from Millhauser's "menacing" and "unsettling" works in conceiving "Enchanted Night," but which "Millhauser also seems handcuffed by the languor."[6] Harshaw reports that this "curious novella" may be a harbinger of what Millhauser "may capable of delivering if he paid as much attention to moments of reality as he does to the realm of illusion."[6]
