The Changeling

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.