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A review by thecastlebuilder
The Changeling by Victor LaValle
5.0
A strange and unexpected story that takes itself very seriously despite a plethora of ideas that are, on their face, a bit silly. The fantastical elements of The Changeling are embedded into much more grounded fears and traumas in a dance that's hard to keep up with and impressive the whole way through.
LaValle's core maneuver in this story is the blending of fable and folktale with the anxieties and ills of the modern world, and in every instance that it *could* be trite or overly clever, he balances it with a degree of strangeness, ambiguity, and dread that keeps the story moving and keeps its underlying ideas unsettling and untidy.
I found the ending to be a little bit too neat, but the story overall was such an enjoyable ride, so willfully defiant of expectation, that I couldn't help but love it. It's a difficult to book to pitch to someone, precisely because its meandering story is so much fun to discover as it happens; but it won me over by being periodically terrifying and delightfully mysterious all the way through.
LaValle's core maneuver in this story is the blending of fable and folktale with the anxieties and ills of the modern world, and in every instance that it *could* be trite or overly clever, he balances it with a degree of strangeness, ambiguity, and dread that keeps the story moving and keeps its underlying ideas unsettling and untidy.
I found the ending to be a little bit too neat, but the story overall was such an enjoyable ride, so willfully defiant of expectation, that I couldn't help but love it. It's a difficult to book to pitch to someone, precisely because its meandering story is so much fun to discover as it happens; but it won me over by being periodically terrifying and delightfully mysterious all the way through.