Review: The Changeling

The Changeling by Joy Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can't believe how many books I've read recently that feel like this book made me feel, and it's got to just be coincidence seeing as this book is 40 years old. (Die, My Love, from the Man Booker International Prize longlist, which I hated/loved/couldn't stop thinking about and The Chandelier, which was too oppressive and I quit, for now).... The similarities have to do with motherhood and being trapped and in this case, Pearl has escaped her husband only to lose him in a plane accident, and to be left to raise a child she's not sure is really her child, back on the island of crazy situations and feral children that her dead husband's brother seems to run. Nobody is normal, nobody is healthy, as a reader it is hard to know what is real, and just when you think you get it, BAM that ending! Plus she is drinking throughout everything, so her grip on reality is suspect.

Gorgeous cover, clearly I need to read more Joy Williams (I felt tepid about her flash fiction 99 Stories of God and never tried anything else), and clearly that was a wrong move.

Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to this title through Edelweiss. The 40th anniversary edition came out April 10, 2018.

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