The Changeling

I'm always picking up horror novels and then getting disappointed. I finally found that was worthy of its praise (it was actually named to the New York Library's ten best books of the year). It's The Changeling, by Victor Lavalle.

The Changeling is kind of an exegesis of fairy tales. The very first line reads: "This fairy tale begins in 1968 during a garbage strike." We learn how a Ugandan immigrant, Lillian Kwanga, meets her husband, Brian West. They have a son, whom they name Apollo, but then Brian disappears, never to be seen again. Apollo grows up to be a used book dealer, and falls in love with a librarian, Emma Valentine. They have a son, and live in happiness.

But is she really happy? The first section of the book that goes through all this was fine but I failed to see any horror in it. I was getting impatient for the supernatural to occur, but when it does, holy cow! The second half of the book, when Apollo is searching for his wife after she commits an unspeakable act, is a tour de force of urban fantasy. I love books that take the real parts of a city, here being New York City, and turn corners of it into places of magical realism. We get an island in the East River that was once the home of a hospital but is now a colony of witches. Forest Park, the largest forest in New York City, which I didn't even know about, becomes the home of a mythical beast. For good measure, we get Apollo digging up a grave in the middle of the night.

"'Do you know how much harm ‘happily ever after’ has done to mankind? I wish they said something else at the end of those stories instead. ‘They tried to be happy.’ Or ‘Eternal happiness is a fruitless pursuit,'" says a key character near the end of the book. Indeed, fairy tales are true in The Changeling. The title refers to a very old element of several different folklore. Here we are dealing with a Scandinavian one. A changeling is what is left behind after some sort of creature, usually fairies, or goblins, or what have you, steal the real child. I won't reveal what it is Apollo has to battle for his son, it's just too out there and deserves to be a surprise. But nonetheless I read the last few chapters breathlessly.

As for the witches in the story, they are not like the old depictions, and are in line with a more modern, feminist interpretation: “'People call us witches,” Cal said quickly. She grabbed Apollo’s hand. 'But maybe what they’re really saying is that we were women who did things that seemed impossible. You remember those old stories about mothers who could lift cars when their kids were trapped underneath? I think of it like that. When you have to save the one you love, you will become someone else, something else. You will transform. The only real magic is the things we’ll do for the ones we love.'"

I hope this book gets made into a movie one day, because I'd love to see how they do the ending. The Changeling is a fun, scary, and gripping horror novel.