A world of primal mysteries
Victor LaValle has created an enthralling novel that is simultaneously contemporary and timeless
It was last spring, at the Ad Astra convention in Toronto, that I first heard of Victor LaValle. Surrounded by science fiction, fantasy, thriller and horror writers, it seemed everyone was talking about The Ballad of Black Tom, which was, at the time, the New York writer’s most recent book.
Once I had a chance to read it I could understand why: The Ballad of Black Tom is a slim novella that punches well above its weight, an uncanny tale that slips into the genuinely horrifying, while never losing its focus on its characters and its world.
The Ballad of Black Tom definitely got my attention; LaValle’s new novel, The Changeling, may have made me a convert.
At once sprawling and intimate, The Changeling focuses on Apollo Kagwa, a New York City bookman, diving into basements and estate sales looking for literary treasures to resell. The novel begins, however, before Kagwa’s birth, with the meeting and courtship of his parents, Ugandan immigrant Lillian Kagwa and Syracuse refugee Brian West. It seems like a blessed relationship, but “by Apollo’s fourth birthday, Brian West was gone,” decamped without a trace.
Though crucial, that’s just background — the novel concerns itself chiefly with Apollo as an adult, his relationship with Emma, who becomes his wife, and their young son, Brian, born on a stalled subway car.
As time passes, though, the seeming paradise of their existence begins to change. Emma begins acting oddly, temperamental and suspicious, disconnected from Brian. It seems to be postpartum depression, but it escalates so quickly that Apollo is helpless to prevent a tragic, horrific act from happening before his eyes.
And then Emma disappears. Apollo is left to try to piece together what has happened, and to try to find her, drawn, by his gradual understanding, into a world of primal mysteries and fog-shrouded truths, a dreamscape where our oldest stories come to life.
The first line of The Changeling is “this fairy tale begins,” a phrase which should serve as both invitation and caution. LaValle understands that fairy tales are not for children, and they don’t all end with “happily ever after”, that any victories are hard-won, and that death and tragedy lurk around every corner. With all this in mind, LaValle has created an enthralling, genuinely surprising novel that is simultaneously contemporary (you’ll never look at Internet trolls the same way again) and timeless, woven of the truths we try to deny, even when facing them head-on. Robert Wiersema’s latest book is Seven Crow Stories.