In one of my classes last year, I read a short story by author Chris Adrian, titled "Stab," the story of a little girl who goes around killing animals in her neighborhood. It was one of the best stories I've ever read. And I'm not typically a fan of short stories. The story actually focused on an 8-year-old boy named Calvin, whose twin brother had died a year earlier and he hadn't spoken since the funeral. At all. To anyone. He ends up befriending the young girl who moves into his neighbor's house with her grandparents, after both her parents were killed. And she's just a little nutty. She starts out killing squirrels and rabbits, but progresses to family pets, and let's just say, when she goes into a stable on a local farm, the story really picks up steam. It's a sick and twisted and sadistic story, told wonderfully brilliantly, from the point of view of a troubled and even suicidal young boy and his even more troubled and murderous friend. The ending is absolutely brilliant. But the writing throughout uses some of the most carefully crafted and beautiful language I have ever read. Chris Adrian is absolutely a top-notch talent. (The story appeared in the Summer 2006 edition of Zoetrope: All-Story, and you can read the opening excerpt here).
So I ended up buying Adrian's novel The Children's Hospital, which I believe was his second full-length novel, following Gob's Grief, which I haven't read. The Children's Hospital, unfortunately for someone taking classes that require a lot of reading and writing a novel of my own, is over 600 pages and in the smallest font I've ever seen in a published book, making me think this was actually a thousand page novel that got condensed into this form so that readers wouldn't feel so daunted. So yeah, it's long. And as such, it's taken me almost 6 months to read the thing. I almost stopped a few times -- actually, I guess I did stop a few times -- and I've read probably a dozen other books since I started it. But I kept going back, because the writing was so brilliant and the story was so fascinating. In the end, when I finished, I realized it was one of the better books I've ever read. So if you've got a lot of time on your hands and/or you love great modern literature, go take a look at The Children's Hospital. It ends up being time very well spent.
Adrian went to both seminary school and medical school and that training is crucial to the novel, which has very religious and/or supernatural overtones and takes place in a hospital. If you read this blog regularly, you'll know that neither of those topics even remotely interest me, but a good story is a good story, regardless of the topic. The premise is basically a modern take on the Noah's Ark fable, except instead of an "ark," the survivors of a great flood that wipes out the world are inside a children's hospital that has been designed by a man with guidance from an angel to withstand the flood. Yeah, it's a little farfetched. Angels narrate portions of the novel and one of them is a character in the novel (who can "replicate" anything for the survivors), but really they are very minor aspects of the story and in fact, the supernatural and religious overtones are kept to a minimum given the overall premise. This is not some crazy preacher book or one of those "Left Behind" disaster sagas for the feeble minded. This is simply excellent literature with a supernatural baseline. So I had no problem with that.
The biggest issue to overcome instead, was the hospital aspect of the story. The flood happens on the opening pages, so the 900 or so people who were in the hospital at the time the rest of the world was destroyed are the only survivors. And they are mostly sick kids who were in the children's hospital. And these kids are really, really sick. So Adrian spends much of the first 120 pages describing their various illnesses in excruciating detail... we're talking feces and bile and kidney failure and horrible, unthinkable deformities that are not for the faint of heart. Or for me, I guess, because I was really disgusted by it all. Yes, Adrian's writing is detailed and brilliant throughout, but I don't think I need to know why Pickie Beecher's bile is bloody, or the exact technical terms for his disease and its treatment. It was all a little much, especially after the opening pages revealed the end of the world and the death of everyone that any of the surviving characters have ever known. It's a bit depressing is all. But if you can get past it, and if you can get through those descriptions in the first 120 pages, the story becomes worth it. And you will realize you are reading the work of a potential genius.
I won't reveal how or why, but the kids' illnesses no longer play a role in the story about 1/3 of the way through, after an event described as "Thing 2" (the flood was described as "The Thing") which transforms the rest of the story and all the characters in the hospital. The most affected - well, other than the sick kids - is the main character, a third-year resident by the name of Jemma Clafkin, who is the focus of most of the story. Jemma is an insecure, kind of lazy, and seemingly cursed young woman who has had more than her fair share of tragedies in her life. Included in these tragedies is the suicidal death of her older brother Calvin, a name clearly taken from Adrian's short story "Stab." In fact, during one of several flashback sequences from Jemma's childhood, Calvin tells her a story about a little girl who goes around the town killing animals. The flashbacks are actually the best parts of the novel in my opinion - and the Calvin character is simply fascinating - and the connection between these tales and the events in the hospital becomes clearer as the novel continues. But throughout the extended sequences inside the hospital, including the formation of a government and an election and the formation of a school and romantic entanglements, we learn a lot about a ton of characters, including not only Jemma, but her boyfriend Rob, a fellow intern, her best friend Vivian, and her favorite patient, the aforementioned Pickie Beecher, who is wise beyond his years and pissed off at God for the death of his own brother.
We're introduced to some 30 or 40 or more major characters throughout the novel, most of them either doctors or sick children and it's almost impossible to tell them apart at first, but Adrian does not take it easy on the reader and allows their personalities to take hold over the lengthy course of the novel. By the time the climactic events occur (involving the appearance of a seemingly empty cruise ship on the water), the reader feels for many of these characters, and not just Jemma and Calvin, even though they have been such a clear focus of the novel. It really is an amazing feat to juggle so many disparate characters without turning them into caricatures and give them each their own plotline and backgrounds while all sharing limited space inside this hospital. A wonderful job. And there's no rest for the weary in the plot either... new major events come at the reader over and over, so that we're not just waiting and wondering what the hell happened to cause the flood and what is the meaning of it all, because we become involved in the daily lives and daily troubles of the characters trying to merely function inside the hospital after the end of the world.
So this is a highly recommended novel. It's not exactly a beach read. It's not exactly something you can just pick up and breeze through. But if you begin it - and if you can handle some pretty intense descriptions of really sick kids in the opening pages - you will continually be drawn back to it until you eventually don't want to put it down even if it takes you an hour to finish the next dense chapter. It's that good. Kudos to Mr. Adrian. I don't think I can even aspire to be as great a writer as he already is.
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