‘The Changeling ’: An eerie fairytale fit for the times
LaValle intertwines horror, magic and social consciousness
The troll you’d find in old folklore is of a different ilk than those found in contemporary times — the former lurked in a forest, the latter on the Internet. Yet Victor LaValle magically weaves both into his bewitching masterpiece The Changeling (Spiegel & Grau, 448 pp., eeee out of four).
LaValle has merged horror and social consciousness before —
The Ballad of Black Tom used Harlem as a setting for retelling a Lovecraft tale. Like a woke Brothers Grimm, his clever new spin on the ancient changeling myth is a modern fairy tale for the Trump era, tackling parenting, marriage, immigration, race and terrifying loss.
Apollo Kagwa is a New York City rare-book seller whose father left him and his Ugandan mother mysteriously when he was a child. Years later, he’s haunted by nightmares involving his dad.
Still, Apollo enjoys his own great love story with his wife, Emma, and yearns to be a better parent for his infant son, Brian. After the baby’s birth (in the back of a cab, no less), though, Emma begins to act oddly around her family.
Apollo’s entire existence takes a tragic turn one evening when Emma turns from soulmate to supervillain: She viciously chains Apollo up and forces him to listen as she murders their son, then escapes into the night.
Emotionally wrecked, Apollo embarks on a quest for truth that involves a valuable signed first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, a secret island full of women who might be witches, a cult with freaky goals and an eccentric suburban gentleman who claims to have information about Emma’s whereabouts.
LaValle impressively maintains his storytelling momentum throughout The Changeling as Apollo navigates a wondrous and often disturbing world he never knew existed. He creates a meta level for the reader as well: One character Apollo meets along the way tells him, “A bad fairy tale has some simple ... moral. A great fairy tale tells the truth.”
As easy as it might be to label things fantastical, LaValle always grounds the most disturbing ma- terial in reality, so we feel every moment of Apollo’s rage and sadness. His small victories against the darkness he faces mean more when they come.
The author throws in some New York history lessons and pop-culture references but never overdoes either, and he uses the idea of social media in insightful but also insidious ways. A “New Dad” with a tendency to share way too many Facebook pictures of his son, Apollo finds technology to be both a blessing on his path to find Emma and a weapon used against him.
There’s a great group of supporting characters around Apollo, too, from despicable, oh-so-timely antagonists to allies such as his protective mom and best book bud Patrice, all of whom are intriguingly complex.
“Every human being is a series of stories; it’s nice when someone wants to hear a new one,” LaValle writes. Or, in the case of The
Changeling, read one. He not only recaptures the need for fairy tales but makes this essential reading as well.