Switched, by N.R. Walker

[Ulysses]

Switched
By N.R. Walker
BlueHeart Press 2016
Four stars

Well, this was pretty intense. I am surprised I’d not read more by N.R. Walker before. Obviously, or I would have known she was Australian. This was a good book to start with. Strong writing, wonderfully complete characters backed up by a rich supporting cast, Walker’s story is emotionally powerful and while there were a couple of things that stretched my credulity a bit, I loved it overall.

Israel Ingham has an outwardly ideal life, but his friends know that it’s not so perfect. The real issue is his hostile and distant parents, to whom he has always been a disappointment. He works with his very successful, very rich father, and he actually loves his job, but ever since he came out to his parents as a teenager, it has been a cold war with them.

Samuel Finch, his bestie since high school, is the brightest light in his life. Sam’s a lawyer now, and his family is not just far richer than Israel’s, but old money to boot. They, on the other hand, have taken Israel in as one of their own, and have given him the love he missed at home. I love that Walker has taken the effort to show how good and warm these people are, in spite of their social position.

And then there are the boys, the little gang of gay twenty-somethings with whom Sam and Israel hang out, drink, and cruise Sydney’s club scene. They tease Sam and Israel about being married, and wonder that neither of these handsome, successful young men has managed to find a longterm boyfriend.

And then it all gets knocked to pieces. Seems that in the neonatal care unit in the hospital where Israel was born twenty-six years earlier, somebody accidently switched him with another baby boy born at the same time. Israel is not his parents’ son. There’s another young man out there who got Israel’s life.

This is Israel’s journey to find himself in a world where he has always felt detached and out of place. It is the story of two families, the Inghams and the Westbrooks, dealing with a shattering reality that was not their fault. I remember exactly who I was at 26 years old, and I can barely imagine how devastating finding out I’d been switched at birth would have been for me. Walker takes this maelstrom of emotion and gives the reader a heady emotional ride, creating a parallel between Israel’s awareness of his birth family and his awakening to the real nature of his twelve-year friendship with Sam.

If I had any grouse with the plot overall, it is that somehow Israel would have had so little understanding of his parents’ own back story at the age of twenty-six. Somehow, I think even the burden of being a disappointment, and his parents’ emotional distance, can’t quite justify Israel’s complete ignorance of what makes his mother and father tick. But, then again, if he’s dense enough not to see what Sam is to him, maybe some of the problem lies in his own blinkered heart…maybe being switched at birth is what Israel needed to find himself.

Lots of good stuff here. Walker tells a tale with elegance and authenticity. I loved the people in this book, and need to read more of her work.

[Aussie54]

Ulysses wrote: "Switched
By N.R. Walker
BlueHeart Press 2016
Four stars

Well, this was pretty intense. I am surprised I’d not read more by N.R. Walker before. Obviously, or I would have known she was Australian. ..."

I liked the Sydney setting, but was a bit disappointed with this book for some reason. Maybe it was a little unrealistic? Surely someone along the way would've leaked the switch to the press; I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't have got out.