8.2 /10 1 Votes
Language English Media type Print (hardcover) ISBN 0-460-06153-4 Publisher J. M. Dent Awards Carnegie Medal | 4.1/5 Goodreads Publication date 1 May 1984 Pages 214 pp (first edition) Originally published 1 May 1984 Genre Supernatural fiction Country New Zealand | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cover artist Bruce Hogarth (depicted) Similar Margaret Mahy books, Carnegie Medal winners, Children's literature | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The changeover
The Changeover: a Supernatural Romance is a low fantasy novel for young adults by Margaret Mahy, published in 1984 by J. M. Dent in the U.K. It is set in Christchurch in the author's native New Zealand.
Contents
- The changeover
- Plot introduction
- Plot summary
- Characters
- Literary significance and reception
- Adaptations
- References
Mahy and The Changeover won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. Thus she became the fourth writer with two such honours (of seven through 2012), having won the 1982 Medal for The Haunting.
Atheneum Books published a U.S. edition within the year.
WorldCat reports that The Changeover is Mahy's novel most widely held in participating libraries, second among all her works behind a picture book collaboration, The Seven Chinese Brothers (1989).
Plot introduction
The Changeover is set in a fairly new suburb of Christchurch called Gardendale; Mahy had renamed the suburb of Bishopdale for her book. It has a fairy-tale plot, with a devoted sister risking her life to save her bewitched brother. In some respects a coming-of-age story, it is also an unconventional romance between an aloof and difficult boy who happens to be a male witch and a strong-willed, psychically sensitive schoolgirl.
Plot summary
Laura Chant has one of her "warnings", a premonition that something is about to happen, but is forced to ignore it and go to school as usual. On the way home, she and her younger brother Jacko encounter the sinister Carmody Braque, who 'playfully' stamps Jacko's hand, the stamp appearing as an image of his face.
As Jacko becomes increasingly ill, Laura believes he has been possessed. She seeks the help of Sorensen "Sorry" Carlisle, recognized by her as a witch in hiding though to others he seems just a painfully well-behaved school prefect who photographs birds as a hobby. She learns that Braque is an ancient being who consumes the life force of others to keep himself alive. Sorry's grandmother Winter, one of a long line of witches, recommends that Laura should "changeover" from her normal life, becoming a witch or "woman of the moon" herself. As such she can trick the unwary Braque into putting himself in her power. Although warned that the changeover can be dangerous, Laura is determined to save her brother, now very near death.
Laura experiences the changeover as a spirit journey through a dark forest, which is also at the same time Gardendale. The Carlisle witches help her through it, for their own reasons, and she emerges from the perilous passage with the power of nature and imagination awakened in her.
Taking Sorensen along to mask her new power, Laura confronts Braque and succeeds in gaining power over him and breaking his hold on Jacko. At first intending to make the evil entity suffer, she rejects the dark temptation and instead ends his unnatural existence.
Characters
~Bohamady op, Full-time Librarian
Literary significance and reception
The novel was awarded the Carnegie Medal for 1984 and was also the ALA Best Book for Young Adults, the School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, the Booklist Editor's Choice and a Boston Globe-Horn Honour Book.
It was described by the Guardian as "a seamless combination of supernatural thriller and entirely authentic teenage story", and by the School Library Journal as "an extraordinarily rich and sensitive novel" with a beautiful but ornate style. In the re-release of the novel in 2007, the author notes the book's significance as having been both her first young adult novel and the first in which she effectively evoked the New Zealand setting. She also observes its lack of adolescent idiom, which gives it a timeless quality. It is recommended by several reading books, particularly for teenage girls.
The Changeover has been the subject of scholarly essays, especially dealing with its fairy tale elements.
Adaptations
A film based on the novel, starring Timothy Spall, Nick Galitzine, Melanie Lynskey, Lucy Lawless, Kate Harcourt, Erana James and Benji Purchase was set to be released in late 2017. The principal photography began in 2016-09-19 and set to end in October.