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The Changeling | 
| Author: Robin Jenkins
Creator: Andrew Marr
Publisher: Canongate Books
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £3.00
You Save: £4.99 (62%)
New (20) Used (1) from £3.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 78642
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1847672388
EAN: 9781847672384
ASIN: 1847672388
Publication Date: April 3, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
Still relevant today November 2, 2008
Charlie Forbes, a secondary school teacher passed over for promotion because of his sermanising, decides to put his money where he mouth is and take a promising student from a Glasgow slum on his family holiday. Tom is a clever lad, but has been picked up for stealing, though he took butter.
A snap-shot of '50s Glasgow, which is all too recognisable in today's city and a look at the argument of nature vs. nurture.
Unexpected, Brilliant! June 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was sent to me and I don't think I would have selected it had I seen it in a store. But I was gripped from the first page and could hardly put it down. It takes a lot to grip ME! But this author REALLY knows what he is doing, and, in just a few words, paints portraits so vivid that you are in the minds of all the characters and just longing to know what is going to happen.
The theme of charity, a middle-class family taking a delinquent slum kid with them on their Scottish holiday, is particularly relevant to today and school violence.
The boy, from a ghastly home, alcoholic parents and rats, enters a new world of decency, love and respect. He does not know how to react.
And when his time with this family is over, how does he return to his ghastly family?
I can only tell you that you will hold your breath until the very last page, praying and wish for the impossible happy ending.
Robin Jenkins must have been an extraordinary man. He is an extraordinary writer, economical with words but getting the utmost effect and emotions from them. I wanted to cry and scream at times. I shall never forget this book.
The nature of charity and compassion March 31, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Robin Jenkins is an author whose work has only gradually begun to receive the recognition that it deserves during the past decade, with many of his books which were out-of-print, being republished recently by Polygon. I have read several of Jenkins' novels and The Changeling is undoubtedly the best that I have read. Although it was written in 1958 the themes it touches upon are still relevant.
The Changeling is about a slum child, Tom Curdie, who is taken on holiday by his teacher, Charles Forbes. Forbes sees qualities in Tom that none of his other teachers see; the latter only see an insolent and devious child, whereas Charles sees that Tom has `one of the best intelligences in the school' and he also notices `the strange beauty of his imagination'. Forbes takes Tom on holiday with him hoping that he will effect a positive change in Tom's life by taking him away from his normal life for two weeks, and by surrounding him with a loving family environment. Tom lives in Donaldson's Court, a notorious slum, and his own family is blighted by ignorance, ill health, poverty and alcoholism. He has developed a steely stoicism to cope with his circumstances, which is misinterpreted as callousness by some. The holiday brings about a transformation in Tom's life but it comes at a terrible price. The Forbes family consider him to be a disruptive and malign influence and arrange to send him back. However, Tom's inner change means that he cannot return home again because the holiday has thrown into stark relief how appalling his family background is. The contrast between the Curdies and the Forbes' way of life is made dramatically clear when the Curdies unexpectedly arrive to `visit' Tom. Their arrival precipitates an inner crisis for Tom and he decides to take desperate action.
Jenkins explores the limits of Charles Forbes' compassion and how idealism has to be tempered with realism and imagination. Charles' motives in helping Tom are not entirely altruistic and he has to confront his own inadequacies and shortcomings. He has to acknowledge that `love has failed among them' and that when he has to deal with the ugly reality of Tom's family he has to accept that he is no Samaritan. The book asks hard questions about the nature of charity and whether you can bring about a genuine improvement in someone's life without further damaging them. The book also shows through the life of Tom and his friends, the real impact poverty and deprivation have upon people's life chances, aspirations and expectations. Apart from Tom the only character that achieves any real enlightenment is Charles' daughter, Gillian. After an initial hostility to Tom she achieves an insight into his predicament and develops `the profoundest complicity with Tom'.
In an age when we are still confronted by the effects of social deprivation upon children this book explores the nature of intervention and how it requires real commitment and imagination as well as compassion. Jenkins' perennial theme is how goodness and innocence cope when they have to confront the brute realities of society, and The Changeling deals with this brilliantly. It is a relatively short novel but it manages to say a lot about significant matters. It is beautifully written and it combines social realism with humour and moments of visionary lyricism.
The Changeling - Enjoy at any level December 28, 2003
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This classic piece of litrature reflects in many ways society's influences on family units and individuals. The novel is based on the quest of and idealistic teacher, Charlie Forbes. He feels his pupil, Tom, would benefit from a holiday with the Forbes' Family in the country. The changeling was written and set in the mid 1950's, but is a pertinent now as the time it was written. I feel Robin Jenkins work is thought provoking and inspiring; his ability to produce realistic characters enables him to display the influence adults and society have on childhood.
The moral fable warns people to nurture childhood innocence and avoid creating expectations that cannot be fulfilled: growing up is hard enough without adding more.
In his writing Robin Jenkins highlights issues to which there are no easy solutions. Having read this novel many times I find it thought provoking and inspiring, through its emotional analysis of the events that occur in the journey to adulthood. With real characters there are many different aspects that I relate to - feelings, actions, situations and people that I have encountered in my life.
Jenkins style is excellent and a joy to read. Highly recommended for anyone studying English at any level or anyone who has an interest in children.
A depressing, yet thought provoking read. March 11, 2002
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
The Changeling is the story of a small, deprived boy named Tom Curdie being taken on a family holiday with his pensive teacher Charlie Forbes. Over the course of the book, Robin Jenkins employs his omniscient writing style to good effect, getting into the minds of all the characters in such a way as to really bring the story to life. The exceptional quality to his writing really does make the characters he creates feel real enough to truly empathize with and feel sorry for.The story that is related to the reader is a tragic and upsetting affair that shows how one unlucky man's well meaning, but misguided actions can have devastating consequences. Tom Curdie has put up walls in his mind to act as survival mechanisms for coping with the atrocities of his everyday life in one of the worst slum areas of Glasgow. With this holiday, Tom is shown a life that he can never have and his own becomes unbearable in contrast. While he wonders how he can ever go back, Charlie Forbes' own family deteriorates with the presence of Tom. As everything culminates to a tragic climax, it becomes clear that as his colleagues warned him, Charlie Forbes' plan was doomed from the start.
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