- Paperback: 615 pages
- Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press; 1st Paperback Ed edition (23 Oct 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0802143334
- ISBN-13: 978-0802143334
- Product Dimensions: 22.7 x 15.4 x 4.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 158,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A hospital is preserved, afloat, after the Earth is flooded beneath seven miles of water. Inside, assailed by mysterious forces, doctors and patients are left to remember the world they've lost and to imagine one to come. At the center, Jemma Claflin, a medical student, finds herself gifted with strange powers and a frightening destiny.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I bought this book from a charity shop knowing nothing about it (it had no blurb) but quite liking the cover. And boy was it an unexpected read. It was both one of the most engrossing and surprising books I have read in years, I was thoroughly enthralled and it certainly runs you through the gammit of emotions. I cried a little at one point, and this is only the second time I've ever cried reading a book. Parts are certainly bleaker than anything I've ever read and surprising as most books are fairly formulaic and give you a happy ending regardless. I feel since I am completely ignorant of theology, I may have missed some glaring references, but I could still follow it. Not sure if the medical jargon wouldn't end up being quite frustrating if you are non-medical though- as a medical student I followed it fine but some of it is quite obscure. All in all, worth reading if you feel you are up for the emotional ride! Not for the faint-hearted.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Like nothing I've ever read. To read this book is to get lost in the madness of the yarn, as one does Dostoevsky or Nabokov, and with much the same mix of joy and frustration. You can laugh as you do at Gilliam's film Brazil, with a hollow feeling in your stomach and a sob in your chest and your mind saturated with ideas.
Despite dealing with the end of the world in a second divine flood and the transformation of a hospital into an ark, its concerns are very real, earthy and dark. Exceptional prose. Overtly American, too: this may not please those for whom the appearance of the occasional pop reference is toxic. For me the latter always has been--until now. Like the best novels almost always do, this one has its deep annoyances. But Adrian's vision redeems everything it touches, up to and including apocalypse. Not to be overlooked.
Despite dealing with the end of the world in a second divine flood and the transformation of a hospital into an ark, its concerns are very real, earthy and dark. Exceptional prose. Overtly American, too: this may not please those for whom the appearance of the occasional pop reference is toxic. For me the latter always has been--until now. Like the best novels almost always do, this one has its deep annoyances. But Adrian's vision redeems everything it touches, up to and including apocalypse. Not to be overlooked.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
52 reviews
47 of 52 people found the following review helpful
Stable But Not Vital
17 Jan 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
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.
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
sin, sex, death, and the story of the end of the world
12 Oct 2006
Format: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.
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
now finished and don't know what just hit me
25 Feb 2007
Format: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.
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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