Customer Reviews

The Stolen Child

5 star:		(151)
4 star:		(80)
3 star:		(38)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

THE STOLEN CHILD, an ingeniously crafted tale about hobgoblins, is a coming of age story and one about identities both lost and found. This beguiling yet tragic novel is placed in the recent past when, at least in the "sophisticated" and technology driven West, the faery myths have lost their hold on the popular consciousness and the creatures have thus become, to our loss, an endangered species joining griffins, mermaids, gorgons, centaurs, and unicorns.

It's the late 1940s in a rural setting outside Chicago. Seven year-old Henry Day, alone in the woods near his home, is abducted by a band of a dozen hobgoblins, which, in mythology, are faeries "gone bad". By the story's definition, each hobgoblin was once human before being kidnapped while still young and, by some subtle process, turned into a creature that never ages, even over hundreds of years. At some point, determined by seniority within the group, a hobgoblin, or "changeling", can return to the society of humans by co-opting the identity of a kidnapped child. Once returned to the "upper world", the hobgoblin takes up the aging process where he/she left off. In this case, Henry, now "Aniday", languishes in the purgatory of eternal childhood while his replacement matures to fully actualized adulthood as "Henry Day". Aniday's tragedy comprises an identity and life's potential lost, while Henry's is that his new identity vies with that of his previous human existence, began in 1851, which Day subliminally remembers and eventually obsesses over.

The novel's thirty-six chapters alternate between Aniday and Henry, each telling his first-person story as it extends over three decades, the history of each touching at points with the other until a final confrontation, such as it is.

This is Keith Donohue's first novel, and I'm awarding five stars for cleverness, though it does have problems which would compel me to grant only four if coming from a more accomplished author. The story concludes in a way that was, for me, very unfulfilling; I thought it lacked closure for both characters. Also, the hobgoblins, who were all once human and can become so again anytime they chose, now live a wretched, unhygienic, near-starvation existence continually exposed to the elements and possible injury while subsisting only with the help of food, garb, and utensils scavenged or stolen from humans. (Indeed, the mischievous hobgoblin will steal one sock from a clothesline to create "the mystery of the missing sock from every washday".) That being the case, the author, while removing for the reader much of the magic, mystery and whimsicality of the faeries' existence, supplies no compelling imperative for them to remain the creatures they are. Indeed, they exist at all because human society once believed in their reality, and they now approach extinction because the twentieth century's technological enlightenment leaves them no room.

THE STOLEN CHILD is a fairy tale for adults that transcends standard fare.

This haunting and beautifully written debut novel had me compulsively turning its pages. I simply could not put it down! The author has created a fantasy world that exists on the cusp of the consciousness of humans. It is a world that is the stuff of fairy tales, only the author has turned it into one that is fitting for adults. Lyrical in its telling, the author spins a story about a world that exists side by side with the one that we inhabit everyday. It is a world of the changelings. These are creatures that exist only to burrow into our lives by usurping the place of a human child. How they do it, why they do it, and the ramifications of their actions are at the crux of this fascinating and wonderful, poignantly told story.

Seven year old Henry Day is just an ordinary seven year old boy living in nineteen forties America, when changelings cross his path. It would be a day that would mark his life forever, as one of the changelings transforms into Henry Day, and Henry Day becomes a changeling known as Aniday. The book tells their respective, symbiotic stories in compelling, parallel, first person narratives that will keep the reader turning the pages of this most engaging book. It is a story that is charged with great emotional impact, as it conveys the desire that each one of us has to fit into the social fabric that is woven around every one of us from that day that we are born. The reader will discover that this often conflicts with the desire to maintain one's unique sense of self. As the years pass by for Henry and Aniday, it is also a story about memories of one's past that impact on one's present and the ability to reconcile those memories, so as to have a future worth living.

This is simply one of the best books that I have read this year. Bravo!

Inspired by the W. B. Yeats poem "The Stolen Child", Keith Donohue's novel of the same title is a fine addition to the fantasy literature genre, yet told with the ample realism one expects from great works of mainstream literature.

It is truly a gripping, page-turning "bedtime story for adults", which will appeal to those familiar with novels replete with magical realism like recent bestsellers "Life of Pi", "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell", and "The Confessions of Max Tivoli". Whether "The Stolen Child" is a work of fantasy worthy of comparison with those by J. R. R. Tolkien - and will interest those familiar with Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" - is indeed an excellent question. I, for one, am inclined to think not, since "The Stolen Child" barely grasps at the Christian religious symbolism that occurs throughout most of Tolkien's writings.

However, in its own right, "The Stolen Child" is a fascinating, often compelling, exploration of self-awareness and personal identity, through the difficult rite of passage from childhood into adulthood. It is a far more serious, often darker, exploration of these themes, than what I recall in Neil Gaiman's recent bestsellers "American Gods" and "Anansi Boys". Those expecting the ample humor present in Gaiman's fiction will be startled by Donoghue's bleaker literary style; a style that is as well wrought as Gaiman's, heralding the advent of another fine prose stylist in fantasy literature.

Donoghue's intricately woven tale shifts back and forth between the real Henry Day and his changeling doppelganger. Seized by changelings near his rural Pennsylvanian farm, Henry Day joins their small band as Aniday - a hobgoblin blessed with eternal youth, never aging beyond his physical age of seven; but he is cursed knowing that he must await his turn as the band's newest member, before he can be transformed back into human form as a changeling sometime in the distant future. He shares in the band's many and tribulations across years and decades, enduring a bleak feral existence made tolerable only by his obsessive desire to acquire the skills of reading and writing. The changeling who becomes the adult Henry Day, rekindles old, almost forgotten, memories of a childhood in 19th Century Europe and America. Memories that are revived through his splendid piano playing in his youth--a skill absent in the real Henry Day - and a strong desire to compose great works of contemporary classical music.

Memories that shall take him eventually back to Europe in search of his own past, accompanied by his sympathetic, yet unsuspecting, bride, ignorant of his true identity. Donoghue deftly weaves between these two parallel stories, leading to a heart-wrenching, all too brief emotional climax, that is remarkable because of the author's skill in setting it up, in his terse, yet often lyrical prose. Without question, "The Stolen Child" is a remarkable contemporary twist on the changeling fantasy saga, and one worthy of a wide readership whose literary tastes range from realism to fantasy.

In the early 1950s, young Henry Day throws a tantrum and marches out of parents' house. He winds his way through the woods and hides inside of a large tree. He doesn't realize, however, that he's been stalked for months by hobgoblins, who take advantage of his isolation by dragging him from the tree and taking him back to their camp. They turn him into one of their kind, while their leader reshapes himself and returns to the human world as Henry. When locals discover the boy asleep in the tree, they've actually found the changeling.

So begins "The Stolen Child", the debut novel from Kevin Donohue.

While the real Henry Day -- renamed Aniday by the other hobgoblins -- adapts to life as a mythical forest creature, the fake Henry Day relearns what it's like to be human, terrifed that his secret will eventually come out. Once a hobgoblin, he now despises his former friends. When he eventually becomes a father, he fears his child will befall the same fate as the little boy he replaced.

Meanwhile, Aniday struggles to remember his real life. He makes friends and enemies among his tribe of lost children, and begins dilligently writing down everything he can recall. Time takes its toll, though, and Aniday's old life begins to pass him by.

I'm of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it's very enjoyable fiction. The story is told in alternating first person narratives, with odd chapters being Henry's story and even chapters being Aniday's. I preferred Aniday's most of the time, perhaps because they were more energetic (Henry's account, in comparison, is kind of dour and pessimistic). But I was hooked on the story, somewhat to my surprise.

But the whole time I was reading it, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that there was a better story that could have been told. Donohue skirts every opportunity for symbolism; everything in this book is painfully literal -- from the kidnapping to the daily lives of goblins to the changeling discovering his old life as an autistic musical prodigy -- the writer misses every chance to connect the myth he creates about stolen children to the actual world.

As the book nears the end, you realize Donahue has run out of ideas and begun stealing from "The Shawshank Redemption". It's strangely appropriate, but at the same time absurd. And it leads to a very anticlimactic ending, robbing the reader of the conclusion the entire story has been building toward. Yes, in a sense the end of the book becomes a stolen child of its own.

Until that point, the story is fairly clever, moving, and exciting. That it never aspires to be greater than the sum of its parts is a shame, but judged strictly on its own merits, "The Stolen Child" is a good read.

It has been called magical, beguiling, remarkable, and vividly imagined. The Stolen Child is all of that, and much more. Keith Donohue's debut novel is an intriguing mix of imagination and reality, a story that reminds us of the joys of being human and the transcendency of love.

A vision for Donohue's work was found in W. B. Yeats's collected works, a poem about changelings, the ageless beings who are believed to substitute themselves for real children. That is what they are intended to do, the author explains, kidnap a human child and replace him or her with one of their own. So deft are they at this transference that they can actually turn themselves into an exact physical image of the child taken. That is precisely what happened to 7-year-old Henry Day.

Feeling out of sorts and rebellious one day Henry stole a biscuit from the dinner table and ran into the forest that rimmed his farm home. He found a hollow tree and hid inside. That was all the changelings needed - Henry was pulled from the tree, stripped of his clothes and bound in a "gossamer web," borne aloft for a distance, then thrown into a river. He awakened to find himself surrounded by children. He was stunned, thinking, "They did not look like any children I knew, but ancients in wild children's bodies." This was to be his new family who called him Aniday and taught him the ways of their world.

At about this same time the changeling who became a duplicate of Henry Day was found and returned to his parents. Worried about convincing them that he was, indeed, their son he had pocketed the stolen biscuit when the true Henry was taken to the river. Now, as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and crumbs fell, he said, "I'm sorry I stole the biscuit, Mom." That was the clincher and his new life began.

Both cunning and wise, Henry quickly adapted to his new life, covering any minor errors that might arouse suspicion with glib excuses and eagerly gobbling the treats that Mother Day prepared for him. What he cannot disguise is his gift for music, the piano, a talent the real Henry never evidenced. As time passed, Henry was plagued by vague memories of life in another time, another place, a former piano teacher. He had waited a century to return to this world, and now he yearned to know who he was before he was stolen to become a changeling.

Aniday coped as best he could with his unwanted existence. He gradually forgot his real name as his past faded from memory, only to return in brief puzzling scenes or phrases. He found friendship with Speck, "a girl, brown as a nut." Together they snuck into the town library end enjoyed reading. Yet, he was haunted by his past life and struggled to learn who he once was.

Donohue wisely relates his tale in alternating narrative voices, allowing readers to follow and relate to the experiences of Aniday and the imposter Henry as each seeks his true self. The Stolen Child is fascinating, poignant, sometimes humorous, a thought provoking fable with life lessons for all.

Keith Donohue's debut novel is an artful inquiry into identity and relationships, unfurled through a dark fairytale. It delivers the supernatural in such earnest that the reader never doubts its veracity. This dual-narrative follows the life of Aniday, a child snatched by changelings, and Henry Day, the doppelganger who has stolen his identity and his life.
The being that becomes Henry finds his identity assaulted both from within and by those around him. The unwitting adoptive father, vexed by the imposter-son's sudden development of musical talent, compulsively erodes the lie and himself in the process. Both strands of the story explore the relationships between parents and children, but Henry's experiences, first as a son and later as a father, deliver a stark perspective on the divide between fathers and sons.
The author's expansive yet unpretentious command of literature is most evident through Aniday's abductors. Donohue's gang of ageless changelings evoke Barrie's mischievous Lost Boys and Golding's brutal tribe of children uncivilized, but reflect a numb cynicism that can only be earned with age. The well-read Speck channels Dickens' Nancy, sometimes mother and sometimes object of an innocent's desire.
The product is a play of distant but sympathetic characters searching for themselves, their roots, and their purpose across the span of frequently melancholy, often startling lives. Along the way, the reader finds questions about family, growing up, and a changing world. Donohue fluently manipulates theme, voice, memory, and the perception of time to craft a moving and entertaining myth. Witness the birth of a classic.

Though my literary experience is minimal, I believe this book has resparked my interest in the imaginary, the bliss that comes with escaping into a world not your own, in reading a book with such passion and intrigue that you can focus on nothing else, and can only put the art down when you can no longer stave off sleep.
I read the book in what I would call one sitting, falling asleep at 4 in the morning only to awaken a few hours later and immediately pick it back up. The passion and devotion to the imagination in The Stolen Child was awe-inspiring.
The duel development of two characters who were the same, but wholly different was an interesting approach in weaving a tale of yearning and wondering, heartache and pain equally experienced from two different perspectives, but oddly similar. I would fear to even attempt to summate a meaning or theme, as I believe several plausible conclusions can be reached, only in that it hinges on the reader and how the book inspires the individual.

My recommendation of the book could come with no higher fervor, and would recommend sitting down only when you can dedicate an entire day to finishing it! To be engrossed in the imaginary and reality of the myth and the story is a sweet feeling; to know characters in a book as if they were real is almost unnerving. The author illustrates and demonstrates their emotions and intricacies in such an elaborate tale that it almost becomes real. The Stolen Child is a truly impressive novel which I will no doubt return to in short order to reread, and would recommend everyone do the same.
M. Dulaney

As the acquisitions editor for a Large Print company, I read 3 - 5 books each week -- a large percentage of those by new authors. When one reads well over 200 books each year (for more years than I like to admit), it's easy to become jaded. So when I read something the likes of which I've never read before, my pulse races, my heart skips a beat, and I drive everyone crazy with my raves about this wonderful new book. THE STOLEN CHILD was such a book for me. The last debut I read (and licensed) that was this exciting was THE KITE RUNNER. Need I say more?

I picked up the book expecting to find something of a fantasy novel. The subject matter--the tale of a changeling who becomes a human child and the stolen human child who becomes a changeling--suggests that it will be a novel filled with the fantastical. While it has many elements of fantasy, it is really at heart a coming-of-age novel and a taught, well-plotted mystery. The novel is rich with internal dialog that does a fascinating job of explaining the inner journey of each character. Novels like this are rather too few and far between and it's always a delight to discover one.

The story is told from a split perspective and it's a device that works particularly well as the two characters are leading rather parallel lives. One half of the story concerns Henry Day, who is stolen and becomes the changeling known as Aniday while the other half is told from the perspective of the changeling who becomes Henry Day. There is a great deal of fascination tied up in the descriptions of how the changelings going about making the switch and about their society but the bulk of the novel lies in things more mundane.

For the new Henry Day, the novel centers first around his struggle to be convincing in his new role and then with his inner turmoil as he grapples with his new identity as bits and pieces of his old life come back to him. A lot of the tension in his story comes from his struggle to balance his past with the present he has claimed. The struggle also raising some interesting moral questions as his present is a stolen one that should belong to another but can this theft be justified by the fact this his own life was stolen from him? Henry Day is truly alone in the world as he can confide his secret in no one and as his past human identity, his past as a changeling, and his present collide, the novel takes on a dark tone of obsession and the need to survive.

As for Aniday, his story is something of a Lord of the Flies tale. He must learn the ways of his new companions and must find his place in their societal structure. Years pass and Aniday ages mentally but not physically and it is this reality of the changelings that gives their story a lot of its tension. Aniday must deal with the frustrations of the constraints of his young body and the old soul it contains. He also must deal with the loss of his true identity. There is a great deal of tragedy in Aniday's story and it is a very chilling one.

In the end, both characters come to the realization that the events of one's lives are what shape the person one becomes. They both must ask of themselves if they would trade where they are, if they would be willing to give up the people and experiences that shape their world in order to reclaim the identities that should rightfully be theirs. To me, this was the question of the greatest interest because it has so much resonance with real life. Every event is like a drop in a pool, with ripples that reach much further than anyone can really perceive at the time of the event. Henry Day and Aniday must ultimately decide what it is that makes each of them the person they are.

Normally I don't read literary fantasy, but this was recommend to me by the reading group I belong to and they had been so right about Robert Stanek's Mark of the Dragon, I decided to dive in to this one immediately. The Stolen Child is the story of Henry Day. Henry Day didn't fit in, he was the proverbial a square peg in a round hole. He liked to hide away from the world and prentend to be somethning he wasn't. In the woods, Henry encounters a changeling and the changeling steals his identity. That's the set up for the story and how it starts.

The tale shifts back and forth between the real Henry Day and the changeling that has stolen his identiy. Henry, as Aniday, joins the band of changline doppelgangers and the changeling as Henry tries to fit into Henry's human life. Henry, now that he is a changeling, is blessed with eternal youth, never aging beyond his physical age of seven, but he as the newest member of the band he must wait for his turn before he can have the opportunity to be transformed back into human form. He becomes part of the band across years and decades, enduring their bleak existence as he tries to acquire the skills of reading and writing. Meanwhile the changeling who became Henry grows older and latches on to memories of playing a piano in his youth something the real Henry can't do. These memories take him to Europe in search of his own past, accompanied by his sympathetic, yet unsuspecting, bride. Donoghue skillfully changes between the two parallel stories, all leading up to a heart-wrenching climax.