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 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.