BOOK REPORT for The Changeover by Margaret Mahy
cover story: WHAT.
bff charm: a self-seeking yay and an all the way yay
swoonworthy scale: 2
talky talk: a comfortable shade of purple
bonus factors: Jacko, New Zealand
relationship status: the blind date that took me by surprise
cover story: WHAT.
OH MAN HAVE WE HIT THE JACKPOT. Where to even begin? Laura’s mom jeans? Actually, those jeans are an insult to the people who wear mom jeans. Those jeans are like the people who invented the Hammer pants went back in time and were like, “what can we do to make our future Hammer pants look more cool? I know! We’ll invent these jeans made of semi-stonewashed denim which cleverly conceal a couch that people can keep their drugs/colostomy bags/baby kangaroos in! WE ARE TOO LEGIT TO QUIT!”
And you know, added to that, there is the fact that Laura is embracing some sort of ghost/albino (possibly a ghostly albino) as they stare deeply into each other’s eyes, despite the fact that Sorry (we’ll get to that) isn’t a ghost. AND it’s billed as a supernatural romance AND there is a Kirkus blurb about Stephen King on the cover and I just LOVE THIS ALL SO MUCH. I want to put on a hypercolor tshirt – excuse me, thermochromatic; thank you, American Apparel – wear mismatched socks, rock my side ponytail and go to town on this totally bodacious book.
the deal:
Laura (Lolly) is a fourteen year old living in New Zealand (what what!!) and she wakes up one morning with a warning. See, Lolly’s had warnings before – moments when time seems to cave in on itself, the edges of objects begin to blur and blend together – and they always amount to something bad. Like the day that she woke up with a warning and came home to find her dad had moved out of the house to live with the young, pretty lady with whom he was having an affair. Laura tries to explain to her mom that something bad is going to happen that day, but her mom is too rushed to pay much attention. But when Laura’s younger brother Jacko falls gravely ill, Laura knows there’s only one person she can turn to: Sorenson Carlisle, the seventh-form prefect at her school, the almost-too-good kid from who knows where. Sorenson . . . the witch.
Sorenson (or Sorry, as he is often known) knows of only one way for Laura to make her little brother well. She must changeover into a witch herself.
But, check it. Here’s the REAL DEAL: The real deal is that I received this book from Alix, of Alix and Lee Pen Pal fame, as a thank you gift for helping facilitate Alix’s 12 Days of Christmas plan for Lee (which, yeah, we’re forcing them to blog about here. Cause IT WAS AMAZING). I took one look at the cover, burst out laughing, and decided I needed to review this book IMMEDIATELY. Because obviously it was going to be the most amazingly atrocious thing ever committed to paper before Breaking Dawn was published, right? Right? Wrong. I actually kind of liked this book. I KNOW. I AM AS DISAPPOINTED AS YOU ARE.
bff charm: a self-seeking yay and an all the way yay
Laura is a really nice girl and I totally understood her teenage angst. Her mom works too much and her dad never remembers to send child support checks, she’s “starting to almost look okay from a distance,” per her best friend Nancy, and her family is pretty poor. That in itself would have most kids in YA books today whining, but what I liked about Laura was that it was the threat that all that might change – that her mom might not have to work so hard, that there’d be an adult male around to pick up some of the slack – that she really started freaking out. Because as crappy as Laura’s life is, it’s hers; and sometimes it’s hard to take chances on something new, even when they might mean a vast improvement in your life.
But all that said, at the end of the day, I just didn’t feel like I’d want to hang out with Laura day after day after day and tell her all my secrets. EXCEPT! Being Laura’s best friend would actually be so good for me! Not just because she warnings when bad things are going to happen, but also because if I were Laura’s best friend, she might let me get to babysit Jacko, THE CUTEST KID EVER. And trust me, I hate kids, so this is one cute kid.
But I would unreservedly give a shining, platinum BFF charm to Sorry, whom I absolutely adore. (Yeah, I know, even though he’s totally a sexually harassing jerk. I’m hormonal? I don’t know.) Due to the circumstances of his life, Sorry’s tried to divorce himself from all emotion, so sometimes he says cold, unfeeling things because he’s forgotten how to feel. And sometimes he just says ridiculously hilarious things because he has no internal filter. Think Damon Salvatore with a mild case of Aspergers. In order to relate to people, he reads (and gets almost all of his knowledge from) tons of books, including romance novels, and is forever applying the lessons learned:
“If you had read Wendy’s Wayward Heart,” he said, “you would recognize my expression. I’m trying to look rueful at being caught out in an act of sentimentality.
Laura said nothing.
“How am I doing?” he asked.
Plus, like I said, he’s brutally honest:
“. . . I turned up in the courtyard among the clipped trees, quite out of my skull and then Miryam realized something she hadn’t before – that I was all that she’d intended me to be in the first place, give or take the little matter of my sex.”
“Not so little!” Laura said.
“Well, thanks for your confidence,” Sorry replied. “About average, I suppose!”
swoonworthy scale: 2
For as much as this is billed as a supernatural romance, I didn’t find myself caring at all whether Laura and Sorry got together. Don’t get me wrong – it isn’t because I don’t like them as characters or don’t think they’re both adorable, because I do. I guess I was just having so much fun hanging around them as friends that I didn’t much mind if they got it on or not.
That said, you can so tell this book was written in the 70s, because it’s – gasp! – open and honest about sex and people having it. Sex isn’t treated like a huge deal; it’s just discussed frankly and maybe even a little sarcastically. Will wonders never cease?!
talky talk: a comfortable shade of purple
Books written in the 1970s always seem to have a similar style of prose to me – a little overly flowery at times, more content to just describe something at length rather than make the plot all action!action!action!, and occasionally making a rather bizarre left turn into acid flashback territory. This book definitely had all that, but it also had these little nuggets of simple truth, plainly put, that made me want to, if not exactly fist pump with righteousness, at least write an EXACTLY! next to the page in indelible ink.
“Be that as it may, Sorenson can be civil in order to make me feel comfortable,” his grandmother said. “We are a fond family rather than a loving one, so consideration is doubly important. We can’t afford to abandon it as loving families may choose to do out of confidence in themselves.”
And:
“I’ve got to say these things, even though I know it’s the wrong time to say them. Laura, you are a consolation to me, but you can never be an escape, because I feel responsible for you. I have to try and protect you and look after you, and anyway, one of the things about sex . . .” She stopped and began again. “You make me more myself than I want to be, at times, you and Jacko between you. And there are times when people make love that they get a rest from being themselves. Just for a few moments they can become nothing and it’s a great relief. That’s what I mean by escape.”
bonus factor: Jacko
JACKO, WHY ARE YOU SO COOL? Guys, this little dude is just the cutest fictional three year old ever. Remember how just looking at the old Lily on Modern Family (no offense, new Lily!) kind of made you want to reproduce baby-things because she’s just so fucking cute? JACKO MAKES ME WANT TO HAVE A TODDLER. And who likes toddlers (other than Mr T, who looks smooth in his sailor suit)?! No one! Because they’re almost all awful people! But not Jacko. Jacko is awesome. Jacko’s hands have feelings and they get sad when they don’t get Mickey Mouse stamps on them. Jacko likes to check out the same books at the library as he has at home because he thinks somehow the story will change. You guys, I am ready to knit this fucking kid a blanket, that’s how much I like him.
bonus factor: New Zealand
Actually, Laura doesn’t seem to like New Zealand all that much, but it’s probably because she lives there. Laura, NEW ZEALAND IS SO COOL! Why don’t you know that?! One day I’m going to live in New Zealand and I’m going to make a variety of cheeses from the goats and cows that will live on my farm in New Zealand and you are all invited to come eat cheese with me! In New Zealand!!
casting call:
Man, I just could not come up with suitable Actual Teenagers of even People Who Can Pretend To Be Teenagers for this book. In fact, I just kept having the same two people pop into my mind:
alia shawkat as laura
Danny Pudi as Sorry
(I know, I know! But every time Sorry spoke, it was Abed’s voice I heard.)
relationship status: the blind date that took me by surprise
Listen, book, let’s not play around. You knew I wasn’t into you when I picked you up for our date. I mean, look at you. Yeah, okay, I’ve been known to go around town with some pretty shady characters, but I still have standards, okay? Standards that I can’t let slip for a book for which the cover features a girl in grandma jeans making time with some sort of spectral illusion. So MAYBE I might have suggested that we meet up for coffee at the airport just so no one I know would see me. And MAYBE I tried to hide you behind a Town and Country Weddings magazine, as if that would somehow make me look less pathetic.
But I’m going to shoot straight with you, Book. You really did take me by surprise. Okay, so you rambled a little bit on our date, and at one point you sort of went on a side trip into crazy land and there were, like, talking tigers and shit, but whatever. The point is, you made me laugh, Book! And you made me want to hug a baby! How many dates achieve that? Few. Very, very few. So not only am I glad we went out, Book, but I might just ask you out again.
FTC Full Disclosure: I received my copy of The Changeover from Alix. I did not receive money for this review, but I did receive a cocktail (in the form of a French 75, bought for me by Lee), which may or may not have contributed to the warm feelings I have for Sorenson. The Changeover is probably available somewhere in your local library’s used book sales.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh holy jeebus, this book has been sitting in my parents’ basement for about 20 years now (I think it got it for free from a summer reading program at the public library)! I saw it over Christmas when I was looking for my Sweet Vally High books (so I could play the drinking game, obvs) and giggled over the mom jeans on the cover, but I’ve actually never read it. Methinks I need to remedy this the next time I go home!
CARRIE YOU ARE SO LUCKY!
I can see why you were put off by the atrocius cover, but The Changeover is great! It actually won the Carnegie Medal in 1984, which is the UK equivalent of the Newbery. You should check out The Haunting by the same author, although it’s aimed at younger readers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunting_(novel)
I second the advice to read The Haunting, I have it on my bookshelf…and Dangerous Spaces too actually. I’m from NZ and read The changeover when I was 12 and remember being really shocked about the sex (how dirty!). Margaret Mahy is quite a well known NZ author.
I kind of want to watch Ghost Dad now.
I kind of want to watch Ghost Dad every dad. Ghost Dad, Sister Act, and Serial Mom already form my favorite mini-family movie marathon.
And My Girl. Never forget My Girl.
I’m glad you liked this book, Erin, because I HATED it. Wait, that makes me sound like a terrible person. “Thanks for your help, Erin, here’s this book I hated.”
Here’s the deal with the book… my mom used to be on some sort of YA book award committee when I was little, and would try and get my sister and I to read all these books. And we both took one look at this atrocity and said hell to the no. And then YEARS later, when I was an adult that could properly appreciate the glory of this cover, I was at my parents house and was like “Hey mom, what happened to that appalling-looking supernatural romance book?” and she said “Oh, I threw it out.” And I was devastated! So I tracked it down online, found out it had awesome reviews, spent a lot of time figuring out which was the appropriate edition to feature this cover, and then… I hated it. It was such a disappointment to know that I’d been right, all those years, recoiling at my mother’s suggestion that I read such a thing.
I think the part that bothered me the most was not that Sorry was a sexually harassing jerk, but the fact the Laura was like, totally cool with his sexual harassing. She never bothered to put him in his place! I thought she was kind of a wet blanket. With an Elizabeth Bennett, their relationship could have worked, but we got a Fanny Price instead. It’s sweet that she cares so much about her family, but that doesn’t mean she is in any way interesting or likeable.
All that said, this book holds a special place in my heart because of our history, and also, that hideous cover. So I’m glad it’s found a happy home.
Also! I think that your relationship status here is my favorite one OF ALL TIME. I had tears in my eyes I was laughing so hard.
Well, it was the seventies. Who wasn’t getting inappropriately fondled by the neighborhood creep in those days?
Wow. I actually have read this book (and my cover was MUCH worse in that it didn’t have any awesome outfits!). I couldn’t develop any feelings for any of the characters, but I may have had more luck if I were picturing Abed and Maeby!
Link to the cover:
http://www.amazon.com/Changeover-Puffin-Teenage-Fiction-Margaret/dp/0140372954/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1327686654&sr=8-4
Speaking as a Kiwi, and avid reader of YA, you should TOTALLY read more Margaret Mahy! She’s awesome! I recommend Dangerous Spaces and The Tricksters (my personal fave). And New Zealand really is awesome, but it’s true you don’t really appreciate it so much until you don’t live there anymore (like me).
I love it when you guys review retro reads. LOVE IT. There are so many LOLs in this review. Seriously, those Mom Jeans should be burned. I hope they never come back in style.
I can’t for the life of me remember the plot of this book but I do remember reading it along with all the other Mahy books. She is a NZ icon (though yeah, the covers are a bit naff).
The book that really resonated with me was Memory – not sure if it is still in print, but recommended!.
I remembered reading this as soon as you mentioned Sorry. I think I read it more than once so I must have liked it.
OMG, y’all – I may have squealed a little when I saw this. I loved this book when I was younger and read it over and over. And then I read it a couple of years ago, and I still love it. In a completely unironic way, even. Which seems to put me in the minority here, but whatever – it just made me happy that someone was talking about it.
i love it unironically too. Also, the Catalog of the Universe. Sorry didn’t strike me as sexually harassing, but direct and honest. I actually liked the way he approached the situation and was like, “I am interested in things you aren’t ready for, Laura, and because I’m a crazy horny teenage boy who is THIIIIIS close to going all dark Sith that is why we aren’t starting anything.”
Thank you, Erin, for reviewing this book. First, because that cover. Second, because apparently Margaret Mahy is a superstar NZ author, and we need to read more of her books!
But seriously, WHY is Sorry an albino ghost on the cover? Is this a side effect of magic? Because Hogwarts neglected to mention that.
As an old lady of 39, who can actually remember the 70′s, I’m here to tell you that this book is the shizz. I raise my champ
can and toast Ms. Mahy and her awesomeness
margaret is my great great cousin! this book is amazing and chatting to her is even amazinger!