The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

The basis of this book is the changeling myth, in which faeries, hobgoblins, devils, or some other not-quite-human creature steal a human child and replace it with one of their own. Changelings pop up in fairy tales, and in history, where parents were sometimes exonerated of infanticide based on the claim that the child had been taken by a devil, that the child they killed was not really their child or not really human.

In Donohue’s novel, however, the changelings are real, and in many ways they are as human as the rest of us. The Stolen Child is two tales told in parallel. Henry Day is the stolen child, taken by the changelings and replaced by one of their own who molds his own features into those of the child and attempts to take on a new human life in place of the one that had been stolen from him a hundred years before. The changeling becomes seven-year-old Henry Day, son of an unsuspecting mother and suspicious father; and the young Henry becomes Aniday, the newest of a tribe of twelve ageless faeries, trapped in children’s bodies and roaming the forest, gradually forgetting their past but always looking forward to the day when it will be their turn to make the change and reenter the world they left behind. And yet neither Henry nor Aniday can complete leave his past, and their stories diverge and come together again as they seek, respectively, to hide and to find their own origins.

I heard of this book before it was published, when Amazon ran a sort of advance promotion. It looked intriguing, and received good reviews, so I added it to my mental list of books to read but put the actual reading on hold at least until the paperback version came out. Even then, it took awhile before I finally went ahead and bought the book, but once I did I finished it in six days flat. The story is engaging, and the changelings themselves are utterly convincing. I have long held that I am not a fantasy reader (at least, not adult fantasy), if by fantasy you mean dragons and wizards and elves and prophecies (as far as I’m concerned, Tolkien is the only one who pulled it off, and that was only because he was the first). But as Eric has pointed out in conversations about this matter, a genre is not confined to its stereotypes, and I have to admit that nearly all my favorite books contain some element of the fantastic. I have the greatest respect for an author who can do something new with something old, who can create a world (or, as in this case, a race of beings) and make me feel that their creation is every bit as real as the world I live in, who can seem to let their imaginations run wild without ever stretching my credulity. The highest compliment that I can ever give a book is that it feels real. I am a sucker for a good story or intriguing plot twist, but none of this matters much if I can’t relate to the characters and the situations in which they find themselves.

The Stolen Child feels real—the changelings as much as the humans. The story draws you in without leading you on. The end is exactly what it ought to be. And yes, there were even tears at the corners of my eyes when I closed the book. It was entertaining and beautiful and sad, all at once.