The Stolen Child (2006)
Debut novelist Keith Donohue accomplishes one thing unusually well here and succumbs to one frequent difficulty in a book that's rather impressive on balance. Drawing from the poem, The Stolen Child (W. B. Yeats, 1886), he tells the story of a group of faeries who steal a young boy, Henry Day, and substitute one of their own number for him in the human world. He then follows both boys, each of whom is estranged from his new life and haunted by the displacement. Even for a veteran fantasy writer it would be impressive to establish and maintain a distinctive narrative tone as well as Mr. Donohue does here. He provides a strong sense of magic in the background without ever resorting to the tricks and spells of say a Harry Potter novel. You couldn't call the story realistic, but he somehow makes it plausible at least within the four corners of the book. He also manages to cloak the whole in an atmosphere of ineffable sadness without ever quite slipping over the edge into the merely morose. We especially empathize with Henry Day's father, who can never bring himself to love the "new" Henry, even as he can't know that the changeling isn't really his own son.
All that said though, while Mr. Donohue offers up a terrific scenario he doesn't demonstrate as sure a hand in developing a plot. After the initial ideas are developed -- in particular he touches upon the notion that legends like that of the changeling may be a function of parents who didn't much like their own kids -- he doesn't seem to know what to do with the characters, mood, and setting he created. As a result, I found my attention flagging about halfway through the book and was left dissatisfied by the conclusion. There's enough here that's worthwhile to recommend this book, but one suspects that Mr. Donohue will do even better in the future.
(Reviewed:08-Jun-06)
Grade: (B)
