The Children's Hospital: Amazon.ca: Chris Adrian: Books

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From Publishers Weekly

Medicine, magic, the biblical story of Noah and sociological ruminations about Americans in the throes of the apocalypse come together in physician Adrian's hip, wry and ambitious debut. When the world is submerged beneath seven miles of water, only those aboard the Children's Hospital, a working medical facility and ark built by architect turned prophet John Grampus (who was ordered by God "to save the kids") survive. Four chatty, digressive and at times grimly comic angels (the recorder, the preserver, the accuser and the destroyer) narrate this epic tale, which follows heart-sick medical student Jemma and the hospital's other unlikely inhabitants (such as the overly-cutely-named Dr. Snood and Ethel Puffer) as they attempt to ensure humanity's survival and live by virtue of the ship's "replicators," heaven-sent devices that can make "apples out of old shoes; shoes out of shit." Eventually, Jemma discovers her magical ability to heal the sick. As fragments of her tragic past come to light, so do clues about humanity's future, and, after 200 days at sea, what part Jemma will finally play in it. This dense and lengthy satirical-but-sincere novel may challenge readers' patience with its fairy-tale-like characters and its long-windedness, but Adrian's knack for surprise and his ability to find meaning in seemingly ridiculous situations is rewarding.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In Adrian's second novel, an elegant and enormously wondrous monstrosity, the world comes to an end, drowned beneath seven miles of water. All that is preserved is a solitary children's hospital and its occupants. Presiding over the apocalypse are four angels who often are indistinguishable from demons: one to chronicle and one to accuse, one to protect and one to punish. Within the floating hospital, medical student Jemma Claflin discovers that a fearsome healing fire burns within her, a fire that she uses to cleanse the hideously diseased children of their "wrongness." It is useless, however, against the greater wrongness of the rest of her ark mates, who struggle to maintain some semblance of normalcy amidst the confounding swirl of the end-time. Adrian, poetically and with exacting precision, has crafted a prophetic, difficult novel of compassion and healing, but with a keen eye fixed on the damning reach of divine wrath. The scalpel's edge between grace and violence, between healing and putrefaction, can scarcely distinguish life as an obscene abomination from the miracle it suffers to be. Adrian attempts a near-impossible summit, and delivers a devastating, transformative work that is certain to burn in the minds of readers long after the final page's end of the end of the world. Ian Chipman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Daring, magical and wholly original, July 24 2009

By

J. Tobin Garrett (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Children's Hospital (Hardcover)

This book was unlike any other book I had read, and continues to be one of my all time favourites. It's a quirky and strange story of what happens when the world floods and all that's left is a floating children's hospital. Without giving away any more of the intricate and well-developed plot, there are visits from angels, magical powers bestowed, and strange happenings.

Don't let the length of the book scare you off. It was so engrossing I often read 100 pages in one sitting without even stopping to take a sip of water. This book is dark, disturbing, and hilarious. The characters are complex, interesting and dynamic, and I loved reading about their various exploits as they ran around the hospital attempting to figure out what exactly was going on and how to deal with the situation.

If you like magic realism of the Haruki Murakami variety, you'll probably love The Children's Hospital. His book of short stories, A Better Angel, is also very good, and has some repeat characters from this book.

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3.0 out of 5 stars A long and involved story, Jun 18 2009

By

Rhea (Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Children's Hospital (Paperback)

The Children's Hospital, by Chris Adrian, is a massive under-taking which examines several issues such as faith versus skepticism, religion versus science, right versus wrong. The premise of the story hooked me - God has again flooded the earth, only this time there's no Noah's Arc filled with animals. All that remains is a nine story children's hospital floating 7 miles above a drowned world. We are introduced to a number of characters through out the book: Jemma, an intern who has the ability to heal the sick, Pickie Beecher, a six year old who drinks blood and mourns the loss of his brother, a preserving angel who lives within the walls of the hospital looking after its occupants, the recording angel who was once human and a swack load of parents, doctors and patients that each come with their own back story that unfolds as the book goes on.

Many of the concepts of the novel are original and downright fascinating. For example, whoever heard of a floating hospital? Or replicators that turn shoes into food? Adrian also examines how a culture steeped in technology and science views the end of the world. Science and technology clash throughout the novel, especially when Jemma's ability to heal the children flies in the face of everything physicians and nurses are taught. Not even the presence of angels is enough to get a buy-in. Rather than being revered, the preserving angel is reviled and often told to "shut up" by the inhabitants of the hospital. John Grampus, the architect charged with creating the children's hospital, describes his relationship with his angel as sexual, rather than spiritual. After all, how spiritual is an angel that creates porn-on-demand and sex toys? Even the recording angel is less than "angelic" and laments over the boredom associated with his work.

That said the author's attempt at using humour flopped in many places, leaving the story morbid rather funny. While I guessed the ending (I won't mention it here as I don't want to ruin it for anyone), I still found it very depressing. Perhaps, if the author hadn't tried so hard to be funny, the ending would have felt more dramatic and less abrupt. As it was, I closed the book and felt that I had missed something. I re-read the last chapter, but was still left with the same empty feeling.

The Children's Hospital is an epic read but it is not an uplifting one, so please don't read this book expecting a feel-good story. Ending not withstanding, it is an interesting novel and certainly worth picking up.

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Amazon.com: 3.4 out of 5 stars (52 customer reviews)

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Stable But Not Vital, Jan 16 2007

By Brett Benner - Published on Amazon.com

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This review is from: The Children's Hospital (Hardcover)

Yes there's no contesting Chris Adrian is a skillfull and talented writer, and through the first hundred pages or so I was completely enthralled. Yet by the end, the lesson learned was on reserving judgement on a book until you finish it. The plot is ambitious and fantastic: A modern reworking of the Noah's Ark story with the survivors of a world wide flood contained in a floating hospital. (truly.)

The story is broken into three 'events' that propel the narrative forward,(the first being the flood) and to give the other two away would be to deny a reader the fun for having the sheer vivacity to push through to the end. For me it became hard going. The fact I had no idea where the book was headed which was great, but the energy it took to plod through protracted passages that go on for pages was enough to almost make me put the book away, except for the fact I wanted to see how it turned out.

At the end of the day, when I finish a book, I have to ask myself who could I recommend this to? Sadly the answer to this was no one. If the plot doesn't derail some people, the exhaustive text will. I'm giving the impression I didn't like it, and that's not entirely the case. I just found myself working extremely hard for something that didn't pay off the way I hoped or imagined.

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars sin, sex, death, and the story of the end of the world, Oct 11 2006

By Jesse C. Severe - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: The Children's Hospital (Hardcover)

"The Children's Hospital" opens with the end of the world and builds in directions both pedestrian and transcendental from there. Part tale of and by an unlikely hero of a medical student, part mythic narrative as thought by the recording angel responsible for watching and chronicling events that represent a third covenant of God with the world, Adrian jumps back and forth between his ghosts deftly. It turns out that our world ends under seven sudden miles of water, the survivors those caught on a random night in a very unusual children's hospital. The remarkable order to their situation slowly starts to reveal. The recording angel doesn't try to hide this from you, but foreshadows much of the order that defines the rest of the book fairly quickly. And by the way, Stephen King should eat his pen in envy of Adrian's ability to deliver a thought worthy payoff to a book hundreds of pages after the actual apocalypse wraps up.

Per his interviews, Adrian is a student at 'divinity school' and a fan of 'American religious history.' Christian readers might mind the absence of Jesus, except as a curse word. The one oblique New Testament reference is to Satan, though I still can't figure out if he was in the book. The pattern of the 'Thing' seems like the sort of thing the Old Testament God was always pulling, and that is at least satisfying.

Though this book can't be read as future history, Adrian speaks to our times well. Death is Adrian's other purported obsession, and I believe I think of death a little bit differently now, especially after the stirring last few pages. A hospital is a place that rages against death to the very end. Perhaps it is appropriate that the apparent last moment of sin and death in human history would occur in one. The implications of the end of Adrian's world make his God's divergence from the new covenant seem somehow not so much a big deal, in fact, though I still do not know that I like why his God opens the floodgates.

So why not? Why wouldn't God pick the most hopeless place, filled with the most innocent suffering to turn history again? A children's hospital is filled with sufferers of unnamed, chronic, miserable, even incurable disorders. Another author might pick such a place to discredit a loving, omnipotent creator. Adrian, having spent many nights in such a place himself, tells his story of a terrible and wonderful miracle and the possibility of all loose ends tied.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars now finished and don't know what just hit me, Feb 24 2007

By Chester Shoeshine - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: The Children's Hospital (Hardcover)

Oh, my God, the frustration. I couldn't put this book down. Even when the flashbacks dragged on. Even when I couldn't keep track of what was a dream and what was actual action. This book consumed me for three days. There were so many questions - What's the significance of the King's Daughter? What was Calvin's "sacrifice" if the preserving angel didn't have to be mortal first too? What happened to the book that Calvin wrote that Jemma threw into the ocean? - all left unanswered, and not in the way that leaves you feeling like the author has skillfully crafted ambiguity for interpretation, but in the way that makes you think the author has taken on so much that he can't help but forget about the questions raised earlier.

Like I said, I couldn't put it down, which speaks for the book's spell-like grip it had on me. But as beautiful as it was, I'm unbelievably furious at this book for leaving me with nothing but a pervasive sense of grief and a headache.

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