My So-Called Life

In the event this is a deal breaker, you should know right off the bat that “The Stolen Child,” by Keith Donohue, belongs to the genre known as fantasy, and that its pages are populated by hobgoblins and changelings. Fantasy is often dismissed as a necessary evil to get kids to take their medicine—i.e., learn values—or as a soft blanket for 40-year-old virgins. But as the success of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” attests, fantasy can serve a nobler function. By replacing the sordidness of the everyday with magic, writers can approach the philosophers’ stone with questions about history, identity and (why not?) the meaning of life.

“The Stolen Child” is a wonderful, fantasy-laden debut, and looks poised to become a word-of-mouth best seller. It’s the story of a boy who’s snatched by hobgoblins and of the changeling who takes his place. Henry Day and the changeling in question take turns narrating, as each attempts to adapt to his new world. “We kidnap a human child and replace him or her with one of our own,” the latter tells us. “The hobgoblin becomes the child, and the child becomes a hobgoblin.” Along the way, there are some very funny moments, such as when the new Henry gets a girlfriend and awkwardly realizes that—though he’s remembered to grow himself so that he looks his age—he’s forgotten to enter puberty. Or when the real Henry, renamed Aniday, discourses on how to gather, cook and eat bugs and assorted nasties from the forest. “Cricket legs tend to stick in your teeth,” he cautions.

Ultimately, though, “The Stolen Child” is a novel of great power and sadness, a fairy tale about the pain of growing up. Neither Aniday nor the changeling who stole his life seems likely to find anything like peace. Aniday is trapped in a seven-year-old body forever even as his mind matures, an eternal symbol of lost youth. “We did not change physically,” he says. “We did not grow up. Those who had been in the forest for decades suffered most.” The changeling, meanwhile, grows old impersonating Henry, ever fearful that he’ll be discovered as a phony. And the cycle of lives taken and lost threatens to play out forever: the only way to escape from the forest is to hijack a life of your own.

All this may sound precious, and in truth the dueling narrators aren’t as consistent as they might be. But, in general, Donohue’s prose is so spare and unsentimental that it’s impossible not to be moved. He even finds a warm, resonant ending without hammering a happily-ever-after sign to the end of the book. Forget your preconceived notions about the genre. A rich, imaginative novel is a lot of people’s fantasy.