This one sounded very intriguing and right up my alley, but it wasn't. I just couldn't connect with the story. The prose was a bit hard to follow, the characters never grabbed my attention, and I just had to give up. If you like long, rambling stories, you might give this one a try.

I managed to make it halfway through this before I just had to admit that it was too terrible to finish. This was my first Joy Williams and it’ll likely be the last. It’s a shame really as she’s the sort of writer I feel I should like but it’s all too pretentious and nonsensical that I had to throw in the towel so I could move onto something that isn’t such a chore to read.

The Changeling, 40th Anniversary Edition, is a reissue after author Joy Williams originally published her fantastical novel in 1978 to mixed reviews. For me, the novel resonates with magical realism via the stream of conscious voice of a mentally fragile and perpetually drunk young woman, named Pearl. A simpleton with humble lineage and lacking much education, Pearl nevertheless surprises the reader with her rich inner life rendered in vivid and powerful descriptive prose.

Although Pearl is plain spoken and unsophisticated, her ability to parse the souls and physicality of the people who populate her world, both amuse and agitate. The novel is frustrating at times to follow, swinging wildly between reality and magical realism—less lyrical than Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writings yet similar to the surreal rantings of Philip Roth.

The Changeling is unsettling to read which makes it a work of art evoking uncomfortable emotions through brilliant and masterful storytelling.

The Changeling is almost everything I like in a book; a mirror world like setting that shifts and sinks, stream of conscious narration, strange, spare, lyrical sentences. All done superbly. It's a fever dream of Pearls loose, drunk, and delicate consciousness. A horror story of womanhood, motherhood, and childhood. This book won't be for everyone (Anatole Broyard, an apparently famous example), but I think it may find it's place with fans of the New Weird genre.

This was somehow my first Joy Williams read, but it isn't going to be my last.