Review: "The Changeling" by Victor LaValle

Reading a book by Victor LaValle reminds me of the first few times I read a Murakami novel: the same sense of newness and wonder, otherworldliness and danger and the same blurry line between fantasy and brutal reality. It is a good feeling, one that I first found last year when I read his second novel Big Machine and it continues on through his most recent novel, The Changeling, a proud hybrid of fantasy, fairy tale techno and urban noir. It sounds like a lot and a writer of a lesser caliber would wholeheartedly stumble over these genres, not to mention the story itself. But LaValle is so capable and passionate about his subject matter, not only does he make it work and work smoothly, it is hard to see the story any other way. It is a story filled with a healthy amount of twists and turns, a healthy amount of whimsy and tragedy and a more than healthy mix of horror and humor (which makes sense because LaValle himself edited a selection of Richard Matheson stories that has come out or is coming out shortly). By the end, which I guarantee you will get to as quickly as I did, you feel drained, impressed and overall truly happy. The main character of the story is Apollo Kagwa, a bi-racial bookseller whose wife Emma has just given birth to their son, Brian. But before all that happens, the book describes how Apollo’s parents met, with his dad Brian being the son of two worthless drunks and his mother Lillian being an immigrant from Uganda. Brian leaves the family when Apollo is four years, leaving his son with a strange series of nightmares that follow him into adulthood and a box of miscellaneous items labeled Improbabila, which later becomes the name of Apollo’s book company. But soon after Apollo’s son is born, Emma starts getting weird pictures of Brian texted to her and she starts showing signs of post-partum depression. Eventually Emma does something sudden and unthinkable in one of the book’s most harrowing scenes and disappears, leaving Apollo alone and devastated. It is only when he comes into contact with William Wheeler, a tech genius with a lot of secrets, does he begin a journey to bring back with him what he lost. I won’t spoil anything here, but I will say the book involves a lost island inhabited by people like Emma, a handful of Norwegian fairy tales and a climactic scene involving a mythic creature that somehow works perfectly for this book. Along with this brilliant narrative thread, LaValle is a master at giving inanimate objects meaning and purpose, much like Murakami: a rare copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, Maurice Sendak’s Outside Over There, a mattock and finally an iPad app all play big roles in where the story goes as do an interesting cast of characters such as Kim, Emma’s midwife sister who holds one of the book’s most startling revelations and Patrice, Apollo’s friend and business partner, who provides the book with levity and humor that practically saves it from being too dark. This is an immense, big-hearted journey of a book from one of my new favorite writers, and I can’t wait to see what he comes out with next.

Rating: 5/5