The Changeling

I can't stop thinking about this book! It's difficult to describe, but it perfectly captures this sense of dread we all felt at least once in our life when our mundane, everyday reality feels slightly off, like some other world is encroaching upon it, moving too close, its boundaries scraping against the thin layer of fabric that separates us from the awful things that dwell just beyond our reach.

The Changeling is a story about strange disappearances, about things and feelings we can rarely explain, and about what happens when the veil is pulled back from our eyes for the… show more.

Lavalle’s The Changeling is everything the hype says it is.

It is a dark fairy tale (really horror) told in such compelling prose that one cannot stop reading. Cryptic in its approach (for to choose another way to tell it would be cliché), Lavelle’s carefully told story combines all the genre’s elements – supernatural, thriller, panic-inducing moments, and deeply felt and deeply resonating psychologically complex characters and ideas.

It is hard to create such a sustained and intense story arc, one filled with mystery and “what happens next.” Any observant reader understands the referential nature of the yarn from the… show more.

The world of The Changeling is strange and exhilarating. At first we are presented with what seems like a mundane NYC, but then the edges start to bleed as a more fantastical, deliciously disturbing world seeps into and disrupts the ordinary.

At the core of the story is a family and the lengths they go to protect each other. There are so many reasons this book resonated with me, but particularly for this reason—the idea that if only you pay close attention, you will see that a more fantastical world dwells at the edge of our own.

This is an… show more.

The Changeling is my favorite kind of novel, mixing folklore with modern struggles at the center.

It’s told the way a fairy tale is supposed to be told – part adventure, part cautionary tale, and all beautiful language, making it nearly impossible to put down. Victor LaValle has a way of opening windows to characters’ souls, making them almost too real.

With The Changeling, I saw a piece of myself in Emma, a woman who desperately wanted to be heard and would go to any lengths to do so. 

The setting is New York, and the central character, Apollo, is a young man with a Ghanaian mother and a white, ex-cop, father. Apollo spends his time searching for rare books. On the day of his greatest find, his wife attacks him and kills their son, or so it seems. But the story is far more complex.

The central themes are masculinity and the changing nature of fatherhood. It also looks at motherhood, childbirth, love, and paranoia, while dealing with cyber-stalking, immigration, witches, wishes, revenge, and trolls (both kinds). It is a deeply human tale about what can go wrong… show more.