The Changeling

This novel was a refreshing read; it wasn't full of shocking plot twists, but it kept me wondering where the story would take us next. A fairytale for adults, it had many horror elements without being scary. It has more tense and creepy scenarios. I had no intention of reading it because I am a Halloweenie, but then I saw the trailer for the TV show adaptation and became more interested. And then someone said it's not scary, so I gave it a shot, and I am happy I did. Except for one slow moment in the book where I was impatient for the plot to pick up. This book was a solid, good read, and I'll check out Victor Lavelle's other works.

I wanted to give this book 5 stars but I really feel like he trolled the reader with that ending.

In all seriousness, if you haven’t had a chance to check out Victor LaValle’s writings, I highly recommend him. He really knows how to tell a story.

Here we have the classic American romance story that brings a baby into this world. All is well until the father mysteriously vanishes one day without a trace. The boy grows up wondering what happened to him and there’s this eerie feeling that the dad is still trying to communicate with him from beyond. Dreams, appearances, a box full of things dropped off at the door. The boy grows up in a similar situation. He meets the girl of his dreams. They fall in love, get married, and have a baby of their own.

This is where the story starts to really pick up. Without spoiling anything, the man is drawn into a world he didn’t know existed online, real, and fantastical.

The final 10-15% of the book didn’t do it for me, but it was overall great. I loved the themes of family, what parents will do (or won’t) for their children, and tradition. I highly recommend.

Read this at the recommendation of one of my local librarians when I asked for horror on the supernatural side, and it definitely delivered

I am finally getting to this. I've read almost everything else by LaValle (I'm a big fan). I do believe I only have [b:Big Machine 6488057 Big Machine Victor LaValle https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348774112l/6488057.SY75.jpg 6679435] and [b:The Ecstatic 849696 The Ecstatic Victor LaValle https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320495521l/849696.SY75.jpg 835208] to go. I started watching the show on Apple + and it leaves off on a giant cliffhanger, so here we are. This is tough story. No one wants to read about bad things happening to babies, but this is a fairy tale that takes place in a world very similar to our own. It's on the same level as Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (London) or NK Jemisin's The City We Became (also New York City). Fantastic.

“Do you know how much harm ‘happily ever after' has done to mankind?”


So this is an urban horror that wiggles it's toes over the fantasy puddle. Fantasy really isn't my thing, I've tired a few times, but it just doesn't shake my tree. The great thing about The Changeling is the subtle way it manages to blend the horror and the fantasy together. The story is sound, the writing excellent, the characters solid and I loved the relationship between Apollo and Patrice. Just a little something missing at the end. Didn't enjoy it as much as The Devil In Silver but still really good.

I really liked this book. The writing is really charming (which feels weird to say with this type of content) and the fairy tale atmosphere worked really well for the most part. New York and its history were well utilized. There is one plot point in the middle of the book that I thought was kind of silly (the part at Rikers - considering later discussions that was all absurdly easy and felt kind of pointless) but overall fantastic.

book 1/30  The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
First book of 2023 is complete! The Changeling is a story of, as the title suggests, ancient magic that brings changelings to our world. The story starts off a little slow, but picks up FAST about halfway through. I finished the last half of the story in a few hours (including into the wee hours of the morning today)
I really enjoyed this novel! I love magic and folklore in books and this novel had the right mix of it all for me. 

The Changeling by Victor LaValle is an awesome work of dark fantasy. Fairytale and myth with chilling and profoundly disturbing scenes dark enough to appeal to horror fans, this book has it all. It's hard for me to give a synopsis without spoiling this book, and since someone spoiled one of the major reveals of this book for me I think it's better to simply omit the synopsis, that's what Goodreads is for. I'm just going to say that this is a magical story that follows a Black family in NYC while incorporating various elements of fairytale and myth, especially that of the changeling. LaValle hits on a lot of very deep ideas about family, tradition, culture, generational trauma, and love. Throughout much of the book LaValle proved to be a masterful storyteller. There were a few loose ends I didn't totally understand, and it could be argued that the novel is too long, but overall I really enjoyed it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I wish I had DNF'd this one.

So, holy frikken cow. There is so much I could say about this book. My biggest comments for those thinking about picking this up are about the pacing of the fantasy. For the first fourth of the book it reads just like a contemporary intergenerational family story with no fantasy, but the atmosphere is mildly creepy. I didn't hate this because Victor LaValle could tell me about mundane tasks like making toast or taking the train and about the journey to and of parenthood all day long. Just wow, what a writer. So if you're thinking of DNFing for that reason but aren't hating the writing I'd say don't give up. THEN, at the quarter mark something freakin' happens and holy holy cow. Then, at the half way mark it really gets into the fantasy elements. If you're someone who pays attention to trigger warnings, particularly regarding children, specifically >!violent loss of a child!< you will want to evaluate if you want to read this book or not. I think this book has a lot of powerful themes, but this is already too long to comment more, just check it out. Overall, I thought this was fantastic and there is more LaValle in my future for sure. Excellent as an audiobook.

I've read a million changeling stories and kind of expected this to just be another one but I was extremely wrong. Brilliant odyssey with a super complex and original but cohesive plot, poignant humanness commentary, great balance of myth/humor/terror. I was hooked the whole time and basically read it in one sitting.

Review

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this at first (a lot of “technology is bad blah, blah, blah” in the book), but this was a great thriller/mystical book. A lot of twists I couldn't see coming and then when I figured out the pattern, was still happy to see come through.

This book could be used to explain exponential growth. It begins as a normal domestic drama, but each chapter is 9.6% weirder than the previous one. After 103 chapters, the craziness is beyond category.

An excellent, clever, literary novel about modern fairy tales and fatherhood.

This novel is a masterclass in using fairy tale themes, and explains to me why so many gritty re-imaginings of fairy tales feel so hollow. This book actually has something to say other than ‘remember that shit you liked when you were a kid? We're reheating it because you're an ADULT now!'

It's so clever. That's the thing I can't get over. The way it writes magic, the way it comments on modernity, the way it ties history to the present, is so clever and masterful. This book is the work of a truly excellent author, to the point where its flourishes and victories look effortless.

The first half of this book is amazing - slow and beautifully written, with a delicious sense of foreboding doom. Then everything starts to happen at once, magical elements are popping up all over the place with no consistency or reason, there's graphic violence and stomach wrenching child abuse for what often feels like no purpose at all, and the book takes a moralistic anti-technology tone that I hated. So overall three stars, I guess?

This book is so dynamic. It truly is a fairytale for adults. There is such a build up of unease and dread early on followed by truly shocking twists and unexpected story lines. There is something mystical maintained throughout. Very enjoyable, even if there are some untied loose ends. They just don't matter. Suspend your disbelief and just immerse yourself. You'll be glad you did. Beautiful and mesmerizing.

“A bad fairy tale has some simple goddamn moral. A great fairy tale tells the truth.”
― Victor LaValle, The Changeling

I loved this book's blend of supernatural monster/fantasy/horror/fairy tale as an analogy to the real-life terror that accompanies parenthood. It taps into the primal fear that we're inadequate to another life into this big, bad world. A missing child is every parent's worst nightmare. One prominent theme of this story is LaValle's examination of technology and how it causes us to both ignore our children as well as invite predators to get a good look at them. The story takes you on a father's dark and dangerous adventure to find the monsters that have completely shattered his young family.

I enjoyed LaValle's use and knowledge of New York City. The scene where Emma gives birth on the subway really works. There's a disturbing and paranoid atmosphere throughout the book that suits the story well. Who's watching you and who can you trust? There's also a good amount of gore and violence to satisfy the horror buff in me.

The downside of the story is that it was very slow to build. It didn't get “weird” until over halfway through. A lot of time is spent setting up Apollo's childhood and background as well as his motivation to become a father. It does require patience. Also the characters, Apollo and Emma were not as vivid as the characters in LaValle's previous work. I don't have a strong sense of Emma despite the occasional shift to her POV. Though we spend a lot of time with Apollo, little is revealed about his personality.

There is also an anti-father message. The book assumes that only mothers have the wisdom to recognize when their baby is not their baby anymore. Apollo himself is only able to see the changeling once he has physical proof. Only then is he “worthy” to join Emma in the fight against the monsters to get their son back. The major villain of the piece is a father who voluntarily sacrifices his own daughter for economic gain and then proceeds to stalk and harass his ex wife. Apollo's father was a deeply disturbed individual, while his mother is a heroic, hardworking, single mom.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of LaValle's work in the future.

I think I might have liked this a bit more if I had read it rather than listening to the Audible audiobook, which doubled down on the author's very simple, matter-of-fact writing style with a very simple, matter-of-fact narrator. It really stripped the magic from the telling. But the story it told was interesting and generally unlike a lot of the other books I've been reading—not sure how much of that is how unique this book is and how much of it is that I just don't read a ton of magical realism.

Meh. Thematically vague and rambling with a disappointing lack of tension.

The combination of anti-technology/social media themes and fairy tales is odd.

This was a lovely, spooky faerie tales. Engaging from the first page to the very last.

I rated it before I finished it and I'm taking a star back because of the ending. Worth reading but it eventually just gets too literal which cheapens all the lead-up. Read it for the creep factor but be prepared for some weird turns and disappointing choices.

I don't know that I've ever been so enthralled with a book, or sworn at one so often. A stunning read.

Fairytale marriage
more Brothers Grimm than Disney
complete with cop-out.

I am about 4 hours from the end of this audio book, and I'm just done. I'm bored out of my skull. There is so much brilliance here, a darkly beautiful fairy tale, but it's hidden under massive info dumps and more mundane events than I can handle. Things will start to pick up, my interest will peak, and then it's back to the mundane. It doesn't help that the narrator of this book is mainly monotone. I might come back to this at a later date but, as it stands, I'm walking away. It's the end of the year, and I refuse to end on a mediocre book.

It's a lovely New York tale that starts back in 1968 when we're introduced to Lillian Kagwa and Brian West. They would marry and eventually have a boy named Apollo. By Apollo's fourth birthday Brian West had disappeared. It's a familiar story simply told with only the slightest hint of magic.

Apollo grows up, meets his wife and they have a son they name Brian. He's your typical father in this connected age, uploading dozens of photos of his boy to Facebook, looking for the flurry of likes. A doting father trying to make it work.

And then we wake up in an entirely different world that's violent and seething just under the surface. This in an old world fairy tale where horrifying things happen and happily ever after has no place in the world. LaValle slips effortlessly between the world we know and then past the glamour that hides the world we don't see. And like Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country it's a fairy tale that's made all the more unique when instead of Aryan boys and girls traipsing through Germanic pastoral landscapes it is centred around a black man in modern day New York contending with ancient forces while being hyper conscious of what the stakes are as a black man circling a tony suburban block in the middle of the night.

Being a parent is a harrowing, tooth and nail struggle against the forces of your own personal history, the baggage that the world is intent on foisting on you and the realization that your partner may not exactly agree on how best to navigate this unfamiliar territory. And everyday it only grows in scope and potential terror. Good luck.