Please ignore the whiners...this book is wonderful.

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	• The Children's Hospital Chris Adrian Grove Press, 2007 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 39 reviews view larger image
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Astonishing

The earth is submerged beneath seven miles of water. Four angels oversee the apocalypse. The hospital, for the thousand or so patients, staff and families populating it, becomes their Noah's Ark.

Nowhere near as preposterous as the concept sounds, Chris Adrian handles his characters and the subject matter so masterfully that you believe every word; you can't help but fall in love with Jemma in the first fifteen pages. Astonishingly beautiful and unsettling, poetic in it's telling, and frequently profound without becoming pretentious, "The Children's Hospital" is one of the greatest books I've ever read.

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Best novel I've read in the last few years

You don't read this novel for its plot. There's no way to even describe its plot without making it sound corny and overblown, and I urge you not to let any plot summaries put you off. You'll just have to trust me that Chris Adrian is a talented enough writer that he makes the concept work (and keep in mind that this is a modern variant of magical realism--step into the author's world and let him set out its rules).

You read this novel for its language--lush yet never baroque, ambitious yet true. After the first three chapters, I was utterly hooked and would have followed Adrian wherever he led me. As it happens, he led me deep inside his main character's head, portraying her with such vividness and affection that I miss her now that I've finished the book. She is an unlikely heroine for the apocalypse and her confusion as she learns how to inhabit her new role is often simultaneously hilarious and affecting. The best parts of the book are her reveries, when she grows so perplexed at the strange new world unfolding before her that her mind starts spinning out escapist fantasies, as if she is a novelist without a typewriter in front of her.

Chris Adrian fans will recognize a few characters from his first novel, "Gob's Grief," set during the Civil War, and certain themes will resonate as well (most urgently, the loss of a brother). The prodigious talent he displays in "The Children's Hospital" and the way he seems to be working out on paper a world within his head makes me desperately eager for his next novel. Or for enough time to pass that I can read "The Children's Hospital" again.

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Please ignore the whiners...this book is wonderful.

I couldn't put this book down. It was amazing. I'm not someone who prides herself on always finishing a book, unlike some reviewers. I've put down many books for many reasons; some I come back to, others I leave behind in the dust without a second thought. Life is short. I don't think I've ever given an Amazon book review. But I had to once I saw the poor, insubstantial reviews for The Children's Hospital.

I was hooked from the first page and could not put it down. It is beautiful, sad, and mysterious. The language is "lush", as one reviewer put it. The asides about Jenna's family (these elements are probably what throw the "whiners" off) are what make the book: they add drama, reality and pathos to what is basically a fantastical book. They make you care for and identify with the characters as they endure situations that are extremely difficult to identify with. I would be spoiling things if I were to elaborate further on that point.

Please give this book a chance. After I finished it, I was left with an aching hole. I wanted more. I didn't want the book to end, but it was inevitable. It is a beautiful heartbreaker.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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