The Changeling

This is a fantastic book. It's a modern day fairy tale about a black family living in New York City. After calamity strikes, the father, Apollo Kagwa, goes on a quest to find his wife and child again. I won't say more about the plot so as to avoid spoilers. Suffice to say, it is a gripping tale.

One of the many things I loved about this book is its deliberate challenge to the reader to think about the purpose and message of fairy tales. Fairy tales come up often in the course of the story, in the conversations between characters and in allusions to classic fairy tales. Maurice Sendak's story Outside Over There is a touchstone for the main character, Apollo. At one point in the story (I'm trying to find it again in the book, but so far no luck) someone tells Apollo that only a bad fairy tale has an easily discernible moral. There is also a discussion of the familiar “happily ever after” ending.

There isn't an easily discernable moral in The Changeling–or, there might be one, but it's by no means the only thing going on in this book. And the life it shows is complicated enough that even if it did end with, “and they lived happily ever after” you'd know better than to believe it.