The Changeling by Victor Lavalle (Canongate) $24.99

Alongside our world there is another. It has existed for thousands of years. Our knowledge of it – the strange laws of its kingdoms, its complicated and sometimes impulsive families, the battles between good and evil – is still communicated in children’s stories.

The books read in childhood also continue to govern the way adults perceive events and their relationships. The handsome prince, the beauty locked in the

tower, the frightening beast, all shape our mature reactions to other people and our interactions with them.

Children’s fables are, very simply, devices for transmission of a culture – for better and for worse – originating from a time, Victor Lavelle writes, ‘‘when such stories were meant for adults, not kids’’.

Lavelle’s novel The Changeling begins with a marriage between a white American male parole officer and a black immigrant from Uganda. They have a son, Apollo.

However, when Apollo is 4, his father disappears without explanation. Then a box labelled ‘‘Improbabilia’’, containing a

children’s book and mysterious souvenirs of his parents’ meeting and marriage arrives unexpectedly on the doorstep.

As a child, Apollo discovers reading. He becomes a book-dealer in his teens. His life in New York is a round of estate sales and sudden prizes of rare volumes. He meets Emma, a librarian. They fall in love.

Apollo and Emma’s son, Brian, is born in a subway train carriage, surrounded by New Yorkers, both helpful and horrified.

He is a much-wanted child, but what happens, after a few months, when Emma suddenly rejects Brian?

‘‘It’s not a baby,’’ Emma says flatly – and the story takes a horrific turn.

Lavelle’s book becomes a journey into human tragedy and cultural legends. Realistic reactions respond to extraordinary events. Human personalities conceal a more ancient malevolence.

New York City is a vivid presence in The Changeling. The streets, suburbs, and transit system are the way stations of a story which takes the reader from contemporary urban life to the mythic depths of the human mind. Apollo’s quest to find both his wife and his child requires him to travel by small boat to an island in the Hudson River and through the city’s more sinister cellars and cemeteries.

It is also an immigrant city and the old stories have strong influences on both people and places, passed on generation to generation. A legendary European horror can easily travel the Atlantic and lurk in urban parks.

The Changeling is a genredefying page-turner. Whether a reader chooses to follow Lavelle and his characters through the city’s maze and layers of ancient evil starts as a choice, but the novel’s carefully paced narrative quickly sets the trap. – David Herkt

After a few months, Emma suddenly rejects Brian. ‘‘It’s not a baby,’’ Emma says flatly – and the story takes a horrific turn.