The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

The Stolen Child

by Keith Donohue

Seven-year-old Henry Day is kidnapped by fairy changelings living in the dark forest near his home - ageless beings whose secret community is threatened by encroaching modern life. They give Henry a new name, Aniday, and the gift of agelessness - now and forever, he will be seven years old.

The group has left another child in Henry's place. This changeling boy, who has morphed himself into Henry's duplicate, must adjust to a new way of life and hide his true identity from the Day family. But he can't hide his extraordinary talent for the piano, and his near-perfect performances prompt his father to suspect that he is an impostor.

As he grows older the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place. Both Henry and Aniday search obsessively for who they were before they changed places in the world.

Reviewed by empressbrooke on

3 of 5 stars

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The Stolen Child, which takes its name and inspiration from the Yeats poem, tells the story of two characters: Aniday is a human child who is stolen by changelings and lives in their world, and Henry Day is the changeling who takes his place and grows up in the real world. Both spend the next few decades struggling with their identities, as neither is at peace with the change.

The format is interesting; every other chapter flips between the two narrators. Both speak in the first person, but it is easy to grasp whose story is being told at the moment. In case there is any confusion, Aniday's side always has a small graphic of a forest at the beginning of the chapter.

Although I finished reading this about a month ago, it took me a long time to decide how I felt about it. Amazon.com promoted the hell out of it (supposedly on its merits, rather than monetary incentives from the publisher) and professional reviews were hailing it as one of the best books of the year, but it left me a little cold. This is probably because most of the characters spend the majority of the story being so unhappy and conflicted. The resolution helps them find some peace, but it's definitely not the Feel-Good Story of the Year.

As I was browsing through Amazon.com reviews after finishing it, I noticed that one of the bigger complaints was that it doesn't explain more about how the changelings turned into humans, why they exist, where the first changelings came from, etc. I thought the level of explanation in the book was satisfactory, since it's essentially a fairy tale. No one ever demands to know how a kiss woke Sleeping Beauty up.

One thing I did think needed more explanation was Aniday's obsession with who had taken his place in the real world. None of the other changelings seemed to have similar issues, and they all encouraged him to forget his past. They had other issues, such as longing to re-enter the real world, but no hang-ups about their histories. Nothing seems to explain why Aniday kept obsessing while the others were able to forget.

The Stolen Child is very well-written and approaches the changeling tale from an interesting angle, but it never made me care for the characters too much. I will definitely look into Keith Donohue's next novel, if he writes one; I think he would do well with a story that's a little less depressing.

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  • Started reading
  • 1 December, 2006: Finished reading
  • 1 December, 2006: Reviewed