It doesn’t bear thinking about. ‘If you look at some of the ways that some of the changelings are described,’ she continues, ‘it tallies with descriptions of mental and physical disabilities. And if you have a family that’s on the breadline … and then you have one person who is not only not pulling their weight, but has to be supervised all the time ... What is noticeable is that an awful lot of the changeling tales describe the changeling as voraciously hungry. So it looks like they were a mechanism to psychologically justify infanticide. The families don’t just act – they get somebody else from outside saying, you’ve got a changeling, this is what you need to do. Shared responsibility. Again it’s a displacement of blame, and it’s a way that the family can psychologically cope with it and a way that the community can cope with it and continue to accept the family. Pretty chilling stuff!’


‘


rational and the mysterious. ‘In many respects I have a similar sort of conflict,’ she says, sipping her tea. ‘I have always found the fantastical, the folkloric, the magical, the supernatural, etc, extremely attractive and fascinating, though I am also extremely intrigued by people’s reasons for believing, and the symbolism behind them, and social uses of different forms of folkore.’


‘ I spent part of my childhood living in a


really weird grey gothic implausible house up on a hilltop, which actually did make the proper moaning wuthering sound when the wind blew. My imagination never stood a chance


The story of the changeling is the source for Cuckoo Song. What is the social use for that, I wonder? ‘Ooh that’s quite nasty ... I was expecting to find the folktales fairly chilling. What I hadn’t expected was that I felt far more chilled by the anti-changeling strategies … Because good grief, they’re horrible! You have all these babies being thrown in the fire, or put on spades and held over the fire, or thrown into running water, or left on dung heaps to scream and ignored until – it’s either to force the changeling to go or to force the fairy parents to reclaim it … And sometimes they are switched back and sometimes they’re not, but they do get rid of the changeling. And there’s this little chilling silence after that. And the horrible thing is there is every evidence that this happened.’


’ Books mentioned:


Fly By Night, Macmillan Children’s Books, 978-0330418263, £7.99


Cuckoo Song, Macmillan Children’s Books, 978-0330519731, £7.99 The Lie Tree, Macmillan Children’s Books, 978-1447264101 £6.99


I am always fascinated and horrified by people’s ability to demonise each other


’


This darkness is prevalent in her work: ‘I am always fascinated and horrified by people’s ability to demonise each other, and to see each other as other than human, less than human, etc … So where there is prejudice, where there is confusion, where there is alienation, I like to try and handle it in a two-handed way. I like to show where the prejudices are on both sides. I like to show where the communication failures are on both sides.’


So what drives her fiction, ultimately? She pauses, uncharacteristically, and thinks, her sensitive face alive with movement. Then she speaks, all at once. ‘Anger, humour, the desire to overturn things.’ It’s looking underneath things, I say. She nods, enthusiastically. ‘And sometimes what’s underneath actually looks a little better than what’s on top.’ This upturning, though, does not confuse; rather, it seeks to understand and explore the nuanced, strange world that we live in. And that goes for all of Hardinge’s books. Hers is an extraordinary talent, and her place in the roster of literature is assured. n


Philip Womack is a literary critic for the Guardian, Telegraph and a Contributing Editor to Literary Review. He is also a children’s author, and his latest book The King’s Shadow, is just out.


Books for Keeps No.212 May 2015 11


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