PositiveThe Village VoiceVictor LaValle’s fourth novel, The Changeling, is a supernatural horror tale as subtle as a slipstream. Although more than capable of crafting what some genre writers puckishly term ‘mundane fiction,’ LaValle knows that contemporary reality cannot always be adequately described by realistic literary fiction … The Changeling begins as a Chandler-esque murder mystery and ends as a picaresque journey through the more terrifying stages of marriage and parenthood. Weaving anger, irony, and compassion through every plot point, LaValle laces his gargantuan epic tighter than a waist-training corset … The signature triumph of The Changeling is not how it explodes idealistic myths about love and intimacy so much as how it indicts social media as a high-tech vector for social pathologies.
