Hi, lovelies. Here’s my month in books, movies, television, and games. 🙂
Books
The Changeling by Victor LaValle is a powerful novel, presenting a variety of horror, both mundane and supernatural, a mix ofĂ‚Â folklore and familial love and violence.Ă‚Â Apollo Kagwa is a book man, tracking down rare first editions to make his living. When he falls in love with Emma and they have a son together, he is determined to be a better father than the man who abandoned him when he was young. But Emma begins acting in strange and unsettling ways, building to a terrible act before vanishing — and Apollo’s world is spun out of control.
What makes the horrors of this novel work so effectively is how rooted the story is in normal, everyday life before slowly gathering in strange moments one-by-one. It’s beautifully evoked, layering in the anxieties of fatherhood and dealing with racism and the ways we fail to be compassionate to loved ones when things are hard and the male ego and so much more — all combined with its undertones of folklore. The worst horrors are not always of the supernatural kind, and this story parallels them well — making for a frightening and deeply moving tale.
This is the second book by LaValle that I’ve read (the first beingĂ‚Â The Ballad of Black Tom)Ă‚Â and I’m itching to read more of his work.