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justinprintreads 's review for:
The Changeling
by Victor LaValle
"Monsters aren’t real until you meet one."
The Changeling by Victor Lavalle is a terrifying modern day fairy tale, full of emotion, depth and horror.
Apollo Kagwa couldn’t be happier. After starting his own business reselling books, he and his wife Emma are expecting their first child together. Once their son is born, both Apollo and Emma experience more than the expected changes to their new life as parents. Apollo is haunted by a father who up and left him and Emma seems to start to detach from reality and from her child, eventually committing a heinous act and disappearing. Convinced there is more to Emma’s actions, Apollo sets out on an odyssey to find out what happened to his family, crossing land and sea and, with each moment, questioning the reality he understood to be true.
The Changeling checked all the boxes for me.
I can confidently say I have never read anything like this, and that's an exciting feeling to have as a reader. Lavalle proves himself a gifted storyteller. The way he weaves the different, seemingly disparate elements in the story together in a way that is emotionally resonant and completely terrifying is an accomplishment.
Lavalle takes inspiration from books and fairy tales we may have heard, but The Changeling places these “far off” ideas into a real and modern world and the combination is a trip. It’s a fairy tale, with all the dark and twisted parts fully intact (Grimm would approve). There’s levels and layers to everything here; there’s terror in ideas like guilt and loss and terror in the real tangible things that can hurt us. The Changeling shows both can feel equally terrifying.
If someone were to ask me what genre this book fit into, I could think of many but none would fully do it justice. There are moments of genuine terror, of immense emotional pain, of longing for connection, of love lost and regained, of cleverness and wit, and of self discovery. It has everything. If you’re a fan of creepy myths and legends and retellings, I must recommend this one.
The Changeling by Victor Lavalle is a terrifying modern day fairy tale, full of emotion, depth and horror.
Apollo Kagwa couldn’t be happier. After starting his own business reselling books, he and his wife Emma are expecting their first child together. Once their son is born, both Apollo and Emma experience more than the expected changes to their new life as parents. Apollo is haunted by a father who up and left him and Emma seems to start to detach from reality and from her child, eventually committing a heinous act and disappearing. Convinced there is more to Emma’s actions, Apollo sets out on an odyssey to find out what happened to his family, crossing land and sea and, with each moment, questioning the reality he understood to be true.
The Changeling checked all the boxes for me.
I can confidently say I have never read anything like this, and that's an exciting feeling to have as a reader. Lavalle proves himself a gifted storyteller. The way he weaves the different, seemingly disparate elements in the story together in a way that is emotionally resonant and completely terrifying is an accomplishment.
Lavalle takes inspiration from books and fairy tales we may have heard, but The Changeling places these “far off” ideas into a real and modern world and the combination is a trip. It’s a fairy tale, with all the dark and twisted parts fully intact (Grimm would approve). There’s levels and layers to everything here; there’s terror in ideas like guilt and loss and terror in the real tangible things that can hurt us. The Changeling shows both can feel equally terrifying.
If someone were to ask me what genre this book fit into, I could think of many but none would fully do it justice. There are moments of genuine terror, of immense emotional pain, of longing for connection, of love lost and regained, of cleverness and wit, and of self discovery. It has everything. If you’re a fan of creepy myths and legends and retellings, I must recommend this one.