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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Boring. Foiled once again by my expectations. Based on reviews, I expected a horror book, or maybe horror-lite. I guess I grossly misread those reviews and was misled a little bit by the title. I was aware of ‘the changeling’ mythos before reading this book, so I expected an eerie tale of how a baby was switched with the changeling and the family experiencing weird/disturbing things because of the changeling culminating in the wife murdering the child. Yeah...that didn’t really happen. It was evident from the description of the book that Apollo’s wife kills his ‘child’, but the scene where it happens was...off. Not in a disturbing way, but in a way that I wasn’t sure if it was actually happening. Apollo’s weird dreams are emphasized throughout the story, and I really thought the scene where Emma kills their baby was a dream. It was just so abrupt and it came out of nowhere. There was very little lead up, and her suspicious and malevolent feeling towards their child weren’t very obvious. Her killing the baby came out of the blue.
Apollo then went on a quest to discover exactly what happened to his baby and why his wife went crazy. Perhaps the most interesting part about this book was
Apollo then went on a quest to discover exactly what happened to his baby and why his wife went crazy. Perhaps the most interesting part about this book was
Spoiler
the commune of women and children hidden on an island in the middle of the Hudson. LaValle did not spend nearly enough time here. While this was very interesting, is wasn’t fully explained. Maybe he was going for an air of mystery, but it really just felt incomplete.
As with most things in this world, it would've been better if it was about the women.
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I so enjoyed this book! I can't really remember why I picked it up. I read LaValle's "Destroyer" and so perhaps in my browsing I decided to give one of his novels a try. I don't really remember and to be honest, "The Changeling" resides WAY outside my comfort zone and my normal genre scope. Honestly, I'm still not sure which fiction genre this novel falls into, but it was an engaging and fascinating read.
At about 1/3 of the way through the book I wasn't sure I could finish. The subject matter got a little dark, but then I reread the dust jacket and decided it would probably "end" okay, so I kept going and what an adventure LaValle led me on! The twists, turns and connections this book makes are innumerable and the commentary on our modern context sublime in its effortlessness.
It's a book to mine. I know I missed so much and part of me wants to start all over again knowing how it ends so I can listen beyond "what's going to happen" and hear LaValle's voice, commentary and allusion more poignantly.
I would warn anyone who has or has recently lost young children to proceed with caution, but I have four-year-old twins and by the end, I fell in love with this modern day fairy tale.
At about 1/3 of the way through the book I wasn't sure I could finish. The subject matter got a little dark, but then I reread the dust jacket and decided it would probably "end" okay, so I kept going and what an adventure LaValle led me on! The twists, turns and connections this book makes are innumerable and the commentary on our modern context sublime in its effortlessness.
It's a book to mine. I know I missed so much and part of me wants to start all over again knowing how it ends so I can listen beyond "what's going to happen" and hear LaValle's voice, commentary and allusion more poignantly.
I would warn anyone who has or has recently lost young children to proceed with caution, but I have four-year-old twins and by the end, I fell in love with this modern day fairy tale.
I bought this book after having read the author's book Black Tom, which is a horror story set in Harlem. This book however was too much for me. It is a story about a mother with PTSD that kills her infant son. I just can't handle books about dead babies. It was gruesome and depressing.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It was never scary like I was hoping it would be, but the twist did get me and I did care about the main characters.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Changeling was a freaking roller coaster!! As someone who's lived in NYC for about 5.5 years, I can tell when a book set in the city was written by someone intimately familiar with how it works. The descriptions of the trains, transit, and the general attitude of NewYorkers was so spot on, I was blown away. Of course Victor LaVelle grew up here, so I wasn’t surprised at all. New York City just felt so alive in his book— not just the background, but truly a part of the story.
Gathering my thoughts about the book is hard because it spans genres. It’s fiction that dips into the varied subgenres of speculative fiction, urban fantasy, horror, and thriller. The story focuses primarily on family: parenthood, partnership, and generational trauma. Believing women and motherly instincts also are themes that grow throughout the book. Apollo is a charming main character faced with unique challenges throughout The Changeling that force him to reflect, learn, and grow from where he began.
Great book. Very strange, but definitely worth the dark and emotional journey required to get to the end.