Changeling, and Other Stories

The Story

The book opens with a quiet, almost melancholic dialogue between an aging poet and the author, establishing a tone of fellowship that permeates the entire collection. The narratives that follow, however, quickly leave the safety of the study, carrying the reader across oceans and eras. In the title story, "Changeling," we meet a police officer named McCarthy, a man of rigid honesty and simple mind. His tale begins in the high-stakes, corrupt environment of New York, where he is tasked with the impossible: retrieving a woman named Anna Janssen from Tahiti after she has committed a murder. McCarthy’s journey is one of strange isolation; in the tropics, he becomes a protector rather than a captor, building a home for a woman he knows is destined for the electric chair. His struggle is not just against the law, but against his own conscience, as he attempts to reconcile the demands of justice with the human reality of a terrified soul.

The collection then shifts, exploring the lives of men caught between worlds. In "The Keeper of the Bridge," we encounter Simon Lovat, a brilliant architect whose life is defined by a secret, shameful history of abject poverty in Scotland and New York. His professional success is a monumental bridge, but his personal life is marred by a deep, existential dread—the fear that his past as a starving boy will be unmasked. His engagement to a wealthy woman is less a union than a navigation of a social gulf he cannot fully cross. Similarly, in the sketch of "Belfasters," the reader sees the psychological toll of ambition and the cold, detached superiority of those who, like the insurance man McCann, navigate the world with a chilling, intellectual arrogance that alienates them from their own families and neighbors.

The narrative voice often pivots to the lyrical and the legendary. "In Praise of Lady Margery Kyteler" captures a fading Irish landscape of overgrown tennis courts and wild bees, framing a tender, tentative romance between a man from America and a girl who feels a spiritual kinship with the trees and the wind. This pastoral grace is contrasted sharply with "The Parliament at Thebes," a surreal and haunting piece where the animal kingdom—a lion, a tiger, an elephant—convenes to address the encroachment of man upon their wild domains. The animals are not metaphors, but living, breathing, and deeply weary participants in a world where man’s "trading" and "bandy legs" are viewed with profound, cold-eyed contempt.

The collection further delves into historical and mythic realms. In "Delilah, Now It Was Dusk," the story of Samson and his Philistine wife is stripped of its biblical distance and reimagined as a psychological study of suspicion and incompatibility. Samson is a man who cannot translate his physical strength into emotional connection, and Delilah is a woman who finds his displays of power not noble, but vaguely embarrassing and alien. Finally, the book concludes with "By Ordeal of Justice," a harrowing story centered on a man named Kerrigan who attempts a dark ritual to confront his own guilt. In a scene thick with mystical tension, the boundary between the living and the dead dissolves. As the exorcist calls upon "aerial potencies" to reveal the truth, the story ends on a note of chilling finality: the man within the magic circle is found to be dead, leaving the reader with the stark reality of judgment that no ritual can circumvent.

The People

• McCarthy: A "square" New York policeman whose stubborn honesty is his defining trait. He is an instrument of the law who finds himself morally compromised by empathy, eventually trading his badge for a life of quiet, lonely anonymity.
• Simon Lovat: An architect of immense talent who is perpetually haunted by the "abject hunger" of his childhood. He views his success as a mask, fearing that his true self—the starving boy—is always visible to the elite society he has joined.
• Lady Margery Kyteler: A young woman standing at the "momentous instant" of turning from girl to woman. She is the emotional heart of the book, possessing a deep, intuitive understanding of nature that makes the social and artistic ambitions of the men around her seem hollow.
• The Lion: An animal diplomat who represents the voice of the natural world. He is a weary, formidable presence who views humanity not with malice, but with a detached, ancient pity, recognizing that man is a creature who would never sacrifice his own convenience for another.
• Kerrigan: A man burdened by a secret, whose arrogance leads him to challenge fate through the "ordeal of justice." He begins in a state of braggadocio and ends in a state of shivering terror, forced to confront the absolute void of his own actions.

In Its Own Voice

The author’s prose frequently leans into the tension between the beauty of the world and the harshness of human necessity.

"There 's a queer sort of rain in these islands; sometimes in a bright sky a cloud will pass, very high, very quick, and the rain comes down like bullets."

This description from "Changeling" captures the unsettling, atmospheric reality of McCarthy’s island exile, where even the weather feels like an intrusion.

"The lawns that were once shaven so closely are now rectangles of high sweet grass where the bees are seeking."

In "In Praise of Lady Margery Kyteler," this gentle image highlights the author’s keen eye for the reclaimed, quiet spaces of an Ireland that is slowly being surrendered back to nature.

"He could n't believe they did n't hate him—how could they do otherwise, he having killed so many?—and a great suspicion arose in him."

In "Delilah, Now It Was Dusk," this line perfectly encapsulates the internal isolation of Samson, whose strength is his primary barrier to understanding the people who surround him.

What It's Really About

At its core, this collection investigates the concept of "the stranger"—the person who, regardless of their nationality or social standing, remains an outsider in their own life. Whether it is a policeman in a foreign port, an architect in a high-society parlor, or a Manchu duke selling trinkets on Fifth Avenue, the characters are defined by their inability to fully belong to the world they inhabit. The book argues that this alienation is not a defect, but an essential condition of being human. It questions the structures we build to categorize one another—law, class, profession, and nationality—suggesting that these are thin veneers draped over a much more raw, animalistic experience of life.

The book is deeply concerned with the "ordeal of justice," a theme that recurs in both its legal and spiritual forms. The author repeatedly tests his characters against a standard of truth that is often indifferent to their human desires. Justice, in these stories, is rarely found in a courtroom; it is found in the way a man reconciles his own history with his current circumstances. There is a recurring argument that the "modern" world—with its insurance policies, city streets, and mechanical progress—is a fragile construction that fails to satisfy the deeper, more ancient needs of the spirit.

Furthermore, the collection explores the relationship between the observer and the observed. Many of the stories operate on the premise that we are constantly being watched—by the animals in the parliament, by the ghosts in the exorcism, or by the memories of our own past. This creates a pervasive sense of accountability. The book asks: what happens when the mask of the successful merchant or the strong hero is removed? It posits that underneath the professional title or the social persona, there is a core of vulnerability that is shared across all human lives. By placing these characters in situations of extreme pressure—the threat of the electric chair, the building of a grand bridge, or the performance of a forbidden ritual—the author peels back these layers to reveal the irreducible, often terrifying, essence of his subjects.

Why Read It Today

Reading this collection today feels like stepping into a gallery of vanishing things. The prose is ornate, rhythmic, and steeped in a specific, turn-of-the-century Irish sensibility that values the cadence of speech as much as the plot itself. For readers who enjoy fiction that prioritizes atmosphere and psychological depth over rapid-fire pacing, the experience is uniquely rewarding. The stories move with a deliberate, haunting pace, mirroring the way memories themselves unfold—not in a straight line, but in circles, returning again and again to the same moments of pain or beauty.

There are, however, hurdles for the modern reader. The language sometimes carries the period’s casual assumptions about race and nationality, particularly in the sketches of "superior" or "inferior" types of men. These attitudes are presented as if they were objective facts of the era, which can be jarring. Furthermore, the reliance on a somewhat archaic, elevated style may feel dense to those accustomed to the leaner prose of contemporary fiction. The dialogue occasionally captures a specific, period-heavy Irish dialect that demands patience and a good ear to fully unlock.

Yet, those who persist are rewarded with a startling intimacy. The book stays with you not because of its big events, but because of its small, sharp details: the feel of the rain in Tahiti, the smell of butter in a grocery store, or the sight of a lawn returned to wild grass. It leaves behind a lingering sense of the "other"—the idea that every person you pass on the street is holding a secret history, a private struggle, or a quiet, desperate hope. It is a book for those who like to look closely at the world and suspect that there is a great deal more happening just beneath the surface of the everyday. It is not an easy book, nor is it a comforting one, but it is deeply, insistently human.