The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue6/3/2023 ![]() ![]() The result is an impressive novel of outsiders whose feelings of alienation are more natural than supernatural. Henry Day is a seven-year old boy living on the edge of a forest in rural Pennsylvania. If anything, if not too much an oxymoron, Donohues 'Stolen Child' puts a human face on fantasy. Donohue keeps the fantasy as understated as the emotions of his characters, while they work through their respective growing pains. This is not Tolkien or CS Lewis, and certainly not the Brothers Grimm, but a unique slant that is all Donohues own. Inevitably, their struggles to retrieve their increasingly forgotten pasts put them on paths that intersect decades later. Neither Henry feels entirely comfortable with his existence, and the pathos of their losses influences all of their relationships and experiences. Hobgoblin Henry develops his uncanny talent for mimicry into a music career and settles into an otherwise unremarkable human life. Human Henry learns to run with his hobgoblin pack, who never age but rarely seem more fey than a gang of runaway teens. In alternating chapters, each Henry relates the tale of how he adjusts to his new situation. At age seven, Henry Day is kidnapped by hobgoblins and replaced by a look-alike impostor. ![]() ![]() Folk legends of the changeling serve as a touchstone for Donohue's haunting debut, set vaguely in the American northeast, about the maturation of a young man troubled by questions of identity. Chapter 6, The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue 'Assembled in a small circle, our faces glowed in the flickering light of the campfire, signs of anxious weariness in our tired eyes, but the meal would prove revitalizing. 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. ![]()
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