It’s not that Mahy’s work is derivative it’s that both authors know how to expertly combine magic, growing pains and common sense to tell fantasy coming-of-age stories with excellent characterisation and believable, intricate relationships. Just like The Haunting, the only book by Margaret Mahy I’d read previously, The Changeover reminded me quite a bit of the wonderful Diana Wynne Jones (to whom I’ve been sending all my good thoughts). Anyway, what makes The Changeover stand out is not the plot, but the fact that this is a novel that uses this familiar plot to tell a rich and complex story about relationships of all types, about growing up, about sexual desire, about loss, and about learning to cope with change. I think I’m going to keep these examples in mind for the next time I hear someone go on about how fairy tale tropes are So Very Limiting.

In fact, if you merely consider the bare bones of the plot, The Changeover sounds remarkable like The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, for example – but the two books couldn’t be more different. The plot of The Changeover could be summed up as young-heroine-saves-her-little-brother-from-magical-forces, which is not at all an uncommon motif in folk and fairy tales. But the only person who will believe her when she says there’s something supernatural at work is Sorry Carlisle – which leaves Laura no choice but to ask him for help and face all the complications that this will inevitably bring about. When the following day he gets sick, Laura knows that what he has is no ordinary illness.

Unfortunately, before they manage to leave he puts a stamp in Jacko’s hand. Laura goes into an antiquarian shop, and both she and her brother sense that there’s something eerie about the shopkeeper. Her fears are confirmed by the end of the day, when she’s walking home with her little brother Jacko. So when it happens yet again, Laura is naturally alarmed. It first happened shortly before her father left her mother for a younger woman, and it happened again just before Sorensen Carlisle, a boy who Laura is sure is a witch, first came to her school. Fourteen-year-old Laura has always had the ability to sense omens.

The Changeover by Margaret Mahy