And sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live

The solitary benefit of flying from Portland to New York via San Diego is that you get extra reading time. It doesn't completely compensate for the overall suck factor, but it's best to look on the bright side., isn't it? As it happens, I had the Stolen Child by first time novelist Keith Donohue, which merits the considerable hype.

The book has two narrators. The first is a changeling who takes the place of a seven year old boy in 1940s America. The other is the kidnapped boy who turns into a hobgoblin and lives a hidden life in the woods. The story follows the next 30 years of each one's life, which become intertwined. While the two boys adjust fairly quickly to their new lives, they both become fixated on their pasts, to the detriment of their new lives. Both risk the relationships they develop in hopes of getting back what is forever gone.

The book doesn't reject holding on to the past, as it also argues that memory is a core component of identity. It does say that people must move beyond the past and embrace the present.

While the book sounds like a fantasy novel, it isn't. The stories are presented in a realist fashion and while there is magic, it is kept to a minimum and in distinctly non-fantastic ways. Instead, this is a book about the move from childhood to adulthood, which the book argues requires putting the past aside. In today's age where people don't become truly adult at about age 30, this isn't so far from reality.

I tend not to like children in peril books, ( thank all that is good and holy that I did not read Song of Kali after becoming a parent,) but I must admit I am not all that concerned about a changeling swapping places with one of my kids. This one could creep out new parents, I imagine.