When I got into the project and saw that that was the way I was going to approach it, I realized that while I remained a fan of his, I was also talking to him like a peer rather than still feeling like that 10-year-old boy. It wasn’t difficult, but in many ways, it was exciting.

Was it difficult to turn a critical lens to someone whose work you admired? Lovecraft is an obvious influence your novella “The Ballad of Black Tom” is both a tribute and critique. But if I blend them with really dramatic situations, I find that it’s like a little bit of syrup to help the medicine go down. If I wrote about them directly, my fear is that it starts to become too lecture-y and kind of dull, for lack of a better term. To me, it often makes sense to put the two things together. In their ways, things like racism and sexism and classism, biases against the mentally ill are outsized, dramatic issues in real life. One of the great things about horror and speculative fiction is that you are throwing people into really outsized, dramatic situations a lot. Why is horror/sci-fi/speculative fiction such a good fit for discussing issues like racism and mental health? The Times spoke with LaValle over the phone about his new novel, why he chooses horror to discuss racism and other social issues and more. The award-winning author blends literary allusions, horror and social commentary to create a riveting piece of work that will have readers examining their own views about parenthood while worrying if they’ll ever sleep again. LaValle’s “The Changeling” is a horrifying fairy tale about the maze of parenthood, shrouded by the shadows of our own upbringing. He begins his quest for the return of his family and finds himself in worlds only a mastermind like Victor LaValle could create. In “The Changeling,” Apollo Kagwa loses his wife, Emma, and their son Brian in an unspeakable chain of events but is determined to get them back.

The changeling book victor lavalle