The Changeling

This novel touches upon many different fears that parents have, but I think it is the above that I think really bothers parents the most. To be sure, they will articulate other kinds of fears, but deep down it is the fact that they ???are making all this shit up as they go along??? that they find most troubling. They cannot, or will not, turn to their own parents, out of fear that they will perpetrate their own parents??? mistakes; but in turning to other sources ??? especially the Internet ??? they open themselves up to making other kinds of mistakes. Their fear of making one single misstep in the raising of their child, of being unable to protect said child from any and all sources of harm ??? up to and including themselves ??? leads them in a downward spiral of even more mistakes, which breed even more fears. It is these fears, in the end, that lie at the heart this novel ??? that, indeed, lie at the heart of some of the oldest stories that we tell ourselves, and to our children...

Full review here: http://wp.me/p21txV-E4

What a page turner. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which I found creepy-but-not-too-creepy. I'm a bit confused about some of the fantastical elements but they're still well-done. Off to go cover my MacBook camera with tape...

I liked this one a lot more than The Ballad of Black Tom. His writing style is the same, and I really like it. I'm partial to creepy, ethereal fairy stories, and I especially love these genres being interpreted by black authors. There was some story bits that I want completely sold on, it felt to me like Apollo's anger at Emma before everything went down wasn't completely earned, but overall I was really engrossed in this book.

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.