A Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Book

"Utterly absorbing...The Stolen Child is an impressive double act, a fine example of what the French call the fantastique -- an intrusion into realism, a leak from the supernatural world into this one.... On the surface, Keith Donohue may seem to have written a clever debut novel about fairies. But the real triumph of the book is that, while our backs are turned, he has performed a switch and delivered a luminous and thrilling novel about our humanity."
--The Washington Post Book World

"The Stolen Child is a novel of great power and sadness, a fairy tale about the pain of growing up. Donohue's prose is so spare and unsentimental that it's impossible not to be moved.... The Stolen Child is a wonderful, fantasy-laden debut, and looks poised to become a word-of-mouth bestseller."
--Newsweek

"The book gains unexpected force as the plots converge.... It culminates in a torrent of emotion."
--The New York Times

"Keith Donohue manages something like an eyes-open return to childhood in his magical and powerful debut novel, The Stolen Child. It is an unsettling and gorgeously written tale of two boys who are forced out of their childhoods too early. Their struggles to return will rend your heart."
--Detroit Free Press

"Fascinating...Donohue paints a vivid picture of American life from the 1950s into the 1970s and the pressures on a boy who, in addition to not being entirely human, is growing up in the Vietnam War era, when attitudes toward sex, drugs, and patriotism were undergoing a sea change....Anidays's story is set in the cool forest where the forever children live off the lush land except for forays into town to steal supplies and perform random acts of mischief. It is a world threatened by civilization, an encroachment that pushes the present and former Henrys toward each other. Both sides of this story are poignant and beautifully told."
--USA Today

"In a world where fable and the fabulous have been drained of their punch and vitality by Disney and its cohorts, Donohue's novel comes as a poignant reminder that childhood's age of innocence is just as illusory as, well, the world of hobgoblins and fairies. Aniday and Henry Day, like humans the world over, are plagued by questions of identity and belonging. In this unusual and compelling debut novel, Donohue borrows from a long tradition of fairy tales to portray the all-too-human story of their search for home and a family to call their own."
--The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"An ingenious, spirited allegory for adolescent angst, aging, the purpose of art, etc., that digs deep. Grade: A"
--Entertainment Weekly

"Unusual and engaging.... Donohue puts flesh to the bones of old fears."
--The Miami Sun-Herald

"Rare and charming...Donohue weaves a story so enchanting you'd swear he sprinkled the pages with, well, fairy dust....Donohue has done the remarkable in fashioning an inaugural effort that fairly begs the term 'classic.' Indeed, it's tempting to compare his work here to that of Barrie, Baum, and even Tolkien -- not just as a fanciful exploration of childhood surrendered, but for its visual imagery and magic prose. But that simply wouldn't be fair since The Stolen Child stands tall of its own accord."
--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"The Stolen Child is shot through with the pretty melancholy of being human: for Henry Day, the misery of faking it, and for Aniday the wistfulness of missing it. Donohue manages to breathe new life into familiar experiences, which leaves you feeling that maybe magic is more human than the old myths would have it."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"The Stolen Child is unsentimental and vividly imagined. Keith Donohue evokes the otherworldly with humor and the ordinary with wonder. I enjoyed it immensely."
--Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife

"The Stolen Child's emotional impact is as fierce as the imagination behind it. The result is magical--in the best sense of the word."
--People Magazine

"The Stolen Child is a truly remarkable work on the ancient legend of the changeling. Keith Donohue's poignant take on the myth, rooting it in our time, and telling it from the alternating viewpoints of the two changelings, makes for one of the most touching and absorbing novels I have read in years."
--Peter Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn

"Like Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy or Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, The Stolen Child is the kind of mainstream fantasy that takes place at the borders of recognizable reality; Donohue's beautifully evocative prose channels some of Yeats' poetic whimsy, but he stays grounded in convincing relationships on both sides of that border, and his style is more modern literary classic than fairytale fluff....His characters' quest for identity, purpose, and conviction is vividly concrete, and their attempts to understand the alien people around them is more a metaphor for human loneliness than a fairy story. Growing up or living forever, in magic or mundanity, his changelings are just dealing with the real pain of emotional maturity, and with the difficulty of understanding others when all people are ultimately trapped and alone in their own heads."
--The Onion A.V. Club

"Take that, Bilbo Baggins! Donohue's sparkling debut especially delights because, by surrounding his fantasy with real-world, humdrum detail, he makes magic believable."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A haunting debut...Donohue keeps the fantasy as understated as the emotions of the characters, while they work through their respective growing pains. The result is an impressive novel of outsiders whose feelings of alienation are more natural than supernatural."
--Publishers Weekly

"Keith Donohue has gone to the far margins of risk to bring back a strange and wonderful tale of Henry Day/Aniday, changeling and stolen child, set to his prose's unearthly music."
--Brian O'Doherty, author of The Deposition of Father McGreevy

"Enchanting...Donohue seamlessly blends the fantastical and the real here, with a matter-of-fact approach to the magic that exists on the edges of everyday life. This is a mysterious journey told in lyrical prose."
--BookPage

"A haunting, unusual first novel."
--Library Journal (starred review)

"Told in alternating stories, the voices of the young boy and the changeling provide vivid contrasts. Donohue is masterful at evoking time and place, and The Stolen Child will resonate with anyone who longs for their youth."
--Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

"If your goal is to slip into an airplane seat or a beach chair and then get out of touch with reality in a hurry, this one's for you: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue. Take this one on the airplane and you won't even notice the turbulence....Trust us: From the first page, you won't want to set this one aside."
--Arizona Daily Star

"Inspired by W.B. Yeats' poem, "The Stolen Child," Keith Donohue had the brilliant idea to pair up the stories of the human child with that of his changeling. Of course, the two are destined to meet, producing the psychological equivalent of matter and antimatter coming together. The twin narratives, which do not progress at the same pace, are not so confusing as they are sound, and there are numerous parallel cycles that make The Stolen Child structurally fascinating. The aged child must learn to be both young and human. The former child must learn to cope with static, endless, and, well, boring youth. In the blurbs for The Stolen Child, Peter Beagle says that this is "the most touching and absorbing novel" he has read in years. It is certainly that, and a very well-written and well-designed work too. "Haunting" is the operative word here. You won't be able to get this one out of your head for a while."
--The San Antonio Express-News

"Donohue is a poet of loneliness, the outdoors and the life-changing power of art and love. His characters are expertly etched and deeply affecting. Readers of The Stolen Child will recall these vivid creatures long after they vanish into the shadow realm of memory and myth."
--The Tampa Tribune

"The Stolen Child is remarkably accomplished."
--The Guardian (U.K.)

"The Stolen Child is a haunting take on the ancient legend of the changeling child that invests our contemporary world with magic from long ago."
--Santa Cruz Sentinel

"Like English writer Susanna Clarke in her 2004 book Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, Keith Donohue leavens his magic with a hard-edged realism and a literary feel. The book is character-driven -- fiercely so -- and anchored in our world, like Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. What's more, if you read, oh, ten pages into The Stolen Child, you'll be hard-pressed to put it down....The Stolen Child is a magical, sobering, but ultimately hopeful exploration of the need to belong and to know who we are, of memory and love."
--The Daily Camera (Boulder, Colorado)

"In his ambitious novel, Keith Donohue tells two stories. The book alternates between the tale of seven-year-old Henry Day, who is kidnapped by hobgoblins and turned into one of them, and the tale of the hobgoblin who replaces Henry and takes over his life. So it's not your everyday novel -- but isn't that part of the fun?"
--The Courier

"The Stolen Child is a marvel."
--The Charlotte Observer

"A bedtime story for adults, The Stolen Child is a tale of the search for identity and leaving childhood behind. More than that, though, it's a remarkably deep and strange read....The Stolen Child will be devoured by anyone who loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
--Arena (U.K.)

"Donohue secures his novel in a very real 1960s small-town America. As a result, The Stolen Child comes off not like a fairytale, but like a unique story about leaving childhood and the search for identity."
--Pages Magazine

"The Stolen Child is a darker sort of fairy tale that succeeds brilliantly by both entertaining the reader and raising many uncomfortable questions. Just how well does any parent know their child? What would the child you were think of the adult you have become? Is there still a place for a little undiscovered magic? Beautifully written and just slightly reminiscent of Peter Pan, this eery bedtime story for adults explores the pain of leaving childhood, the longing to grow up, the yearning to escape and, ultimately, our search for identity."
--Relevant Magazine

"Keith Donohue walks the thin line between the believable and the wholly fantastic with skill. And anyone who still harbors even the vaguest suspicion that there might be something unknown and dangerous out there in the darkness will probably enjoy this book."
--Eclectica Magazine

"When a changeling trades places with Henry Day, the real Henry goes to live in the forest as his imposter once did. Alternating perspectives make for an enchanting good time. Five stars out of five."
--OK! Magazine

"The Stolen Child impresses with its insightful look into feelings of alienation and isolation. Concomitantly, it also develops the theme of losing one's identity, with redemption made more heroic by the courage to accept one's self, flaws and all. Then, too, it plays up to every parent's fear of losing a child, perhaps even of having a child who is less than what was expected (thus, the legend of the changeling). The novel's greatest strength is in its simple, yet beguiling, writing. Unaffected and unsentimental, Mr. Donohue chooses wisely not to bombard his readers with obvious mawkishness. Instead, he reflects on the tragedies of these uncertain lives through perfectly grounded situations of everyday life. The imagery is vividly solid and the storytelling is devoid of artifice. The dueling voices of Henry and Aniday play in one's head as if perfectly natural and real. And while Mr. Donohue paints both boys/men with heartwarming hues, he also reveals their capacity for deceit and self-preservation, with no apologies for intrinsically human failings. Using sparse, often mundane, language, the author cuts deep into the heart of the matter, evokes an abundance of emotions, and succeeds than if he were to employ verbosity. The Stolen Child is a haunting piece of fiction -- simple and uncluttered but strong in sense and spirit. Though presented as an alternate adult fairy tale, its themes resonate strongly in people in search of their identity and their life's mission, to wit, young people who still drift aimlessly between childhood and adulthood. Keith Donohue writes of a longing for acceptance in The Stolen Child; by his impressive entry into literary fiction, he has rightfully gained ours.
--BusinessWorld

"The Stolen Child is an impressive first novel....Keith Donohue's book is an in-depth character study of people's search for identity, and whether the true identity is one that can -- or should -- be hidden."
--The Iowa State Daily

"Keith Donohue has brought forth a magical debut novel full of insights into childhood, adulthood, and the seemingly endless longing that largely defines both. He conjures a world of ancient legend and places it on the outskirts of modern civilization, thereby casting an insightful eye upon both. Like many a story related to childish subjects, there is a complexity here of subtle strength and great depth that speaks to some of the most poignant thoughts and emotions of man. The Stolen Child is a truly enchanting tale that delves into man's eternal questions about the meaning and purpose of life even as it paints the picture of two extraordinary lives linked together by a common identity....Keith Donohue may be a new name on the literary scene, but he's a master storyteller and a true maestro of the written word. Much like the fabled music of the wee folks, his writing mesmerizes and transports you to a completely magical realm that feels somehow strangely familiar, and you emerge from the final page as a changeling of sorts yourself, forever altered on a deeply personal level by this too-brief encounter with the Henry Day who was and the Henry Day who is."
--Rambles Magazine

"The Stolen Child reveals a rich world somewhere between fantasy and realism. Donohue successfully captures the complexity and truths about the loneliness and the freedoms of childhood, while exploring past identities. Readers will hang on to every word in this eloquent creation, and find it traumatic to put the book down, not wishing to break the rhythm and communion with the author."
--Bookloons.com

"Keith Donohue presents a complex picture of closely allied characters in conflict over the very similarities that bind them. His conception is ingenious, and his style has a serviceable flexibility that unobtrusively carries the reader with him. Quite apart from the subject matter, Donohue works an astoundingly effective brand of magic. He promises to be a major writer of fantasy literature. This is a book that you will read and treasure."
--CompulsiveReader.com

"The Stolen Child is an original -- a one of a kind fantasy book; a rich, unearthly and remarkable novel, and one that you wouldn't regret picking up."
--LitPundit.com

"The Stolen Child is a literary fable of intriguing depth: darkly captivating and intensely readable, it is much more than a modern day fairy tale."
--Waterstones Books Quarterly (U.K.)


Author Events

5/18/2007
The Dallas Museum of Art
1717 North Harwood Street
Dallas, TX 75201
214-922-1200
7 pm

5/29/2007
Harry W. Schwartz
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Milwaukee, WI 53005
1-800-689-9902
7 pm

5/30/2007
Prairie Lights
15 South Dubuque Street
Iowa City, IA 52240
319-337-2681
7 pm

5/31/2007
Powell's Books
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Beaverton, OR 97005
503-228-4651
7 pm

6/01/2007
Queen Anne Books
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Seattle, WA 98109
206-283-5624
6:30 pm

6/02/2007
Malaprop's
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Ashville, NC 28801
828-254-6734
7 pm

6/03/2007
Quail Ridge Books
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Raleigh, NC 27607
800-672-6789
3 pm

6/04/2007
Tattered Cover
2526 East Colfax Avenue
Denver, CO 80206
303-322-7727
7:30 pm

6/05/2007
Seminary Co-op
57th Street Books
1301 East 57th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
773-684-1300
7 pm

6/06/2007
Borders
3527 Washtenaw Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734-677-6948
7 pm

6/07/2007
Olsson's
1307 19th Street North West
Washington, D.C. 20036
202-785-113
7 pm