Customer Reviews

The Changeling (Canongate Classic)

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Young Tom Curdie is the product of the Glasgow slums, poor and troubled. But Charles Forbes, one of his teachers, recognizes that buried beneath the trouble exterior is a very intelligent boy. Resolving to make an effort to help Tom escape the poverty of his upbringing, Forbes decides to take Tom with his family for their annual vacation. Perhaps some exposure to life outside the slums will help Tom grow beyond his roots.

Unfortunately, not everyone in the family is enthusiastic about welcoming this guest into their holiday. Suspicions about Tom's character and attitudes about his origins influence the relations between Tom and the Forbes family, causing conflict and confusion. But the biggest conflict is the internal one in Tom as he struggles to understand his place in the world and to cope with the knowledge that life can be so much better than what he has known previously.

The characters here are all deeply human, with a multitude of flaws and virtues that make them both unique and believable. This is a troubling story, with messages about attitudes towards poverty and the dangers of trying to "save" people with quick fixes. Certainly not a "feel-good" book, but a powerful tale that is sure to leave the reader moved.

Robin Jenkins - maybe unfamiliar to many American readers - is one of Scotland's most humane and accessible writers. His novels explore the origins of human good and evil and "The Changeling" follows the tale of Tom Curdie, a young boy taken from the slums of inner-city Glasgow by his well-meaning middle-class English teacher. Mr Forbes takes the tough young Tom on afamily holiday away from teh city in an attempt to prove that nurture, not nature, is the dominant force in establishing both personality and morality. The text explores the dilemma faced by Tom as he struggles to work out whether he fits into this new effete world, or in the dark and violent, drink-sodden existence he has temporarily left. Mr Forbes, too, faces some hard thinking about his own ideas as it becomes increasingly obvious to him that his social experiment is by no means as clear cut as he thought.

As an introduction to the style and concerns of Jenkins you could not do better than "The Changeling". The author's highly visual description and philosophical approach to the format places him in the great European tradition of the novel rather than in the sometimes insular British tradition.

Read this book ... and once you've read it, try any other Jenkins novel. I suggest "The Conegatherers", "A Love of Innocence", "Fergus Lamont" and ... any others! These are distinctly Scottish novels, but their concerns are accessible world-wide.

Incidentally ... "Lighthouses and Ropes"? Read the novel and get the symbols!