The Changing Man by Tomi Oyemakinde (review)
2023; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 77; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2023.a904464
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)Impulse Buying and Technology Impacts
ResumoReviewed by: The Changing Man by Tomi Oyemakinde Wesley Jacques Oyemakinde, Tomi The Changing Man. Feiwel, 2023 [384p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250868138 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250868121 $11.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8-11 While most students start at the prestigious Nithercott School in year seven, Ifelayo "Ife" Adebola transfers midway through year eleven. The transition hasn't been easy: she's one of the only Black girls in her year, sporting the noticeably different uniform of the less well-to-do, and she's having increasingly intense panic and anxiety attacks. The news of mysterious disappearances and persistence of microaggressions from faculty and students alike aren't helping her make new friends. After a series of strange happenings, however, she teams up with Bijal, a Nithercott outsider, and Ben, a charismatic troublemaker who recently lost his brother, to investigate the recent disappearances and their connection to the urban legend of the Changing Man, who is rumored to be able manipulate the personalities of his victims before vanishing them altogether. Ben's commitment to the investigation is personal because of guilt over his brother, while Bijal has been invested in Nithercott lore for some time, so it's Ife's sudden interest in the Changing Man that grounds an insistently strange adventure in things smartly intimate—she's sad, lonely, and scared. As urban legend mystery gives way to supernatural horror and eventually widespread sci-fi conspiracy, Ife struggles just as much with the prospect of being murdered by shapeshifting floral-themed monsters from an alternate dimension [End Page 29] as she does with her lost sense of self, cultural isolation, and attempts to be vulnerable to new friends. Those feeling aren't as easy to overcome as the monsters, which can be handily managed by a flamethrower, but flamethrower wielding is still immensely important to Ife's charmingly fun and heartwarming boarding school experience. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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