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The stories in A Better Angel describe the terrain of human suffering—illness, regret, mourning, sympathy—in the most unusual of ways. In “Stab,” a bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother. In “Why Antichrist?” a boy tries to contact the spirit of his dead father and finds himself talking to the Devil instead. In the remarkable title story, a ne’er do well pediatrician returns home to take care of his dying father, all the while under the scrutiny of an easily-disappointed heavenly agent. With Gob’s Grief and The Children’s Hospital, Chris Adrian announced himself as a writer of rare talent and originality. The stories in A Better Angel, some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and McSweeney’s, demonstrate more of his endless inventiveness and wit, and they confirm his growing reputation as a most exciting and unusual literary voice—of heartbreaking, magical, and darkly comic tales. Chris Adrian is the author Gob’s Grief and The Children’s Hospital. He lives in Boston, where he is a pediatrician and divinity student. A New York Times Book Review Notable Book
The stories in A Better Angel describe the terrain of human suffering—illness, regret, mourning, sympathy—in the most unusual of ways. In “Stab,” a bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother. In “Why Antichrist?” a boy tries to contact the spirit of his dead father and finds himself talking to the Devil instead. In the title story, a ne’er do well pediatrician returns home to take care of his dying father, all the while under the scrutiny of an easily-disappointed heavenly agent.
The stories in A Better Angel, some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and McSweeney’s, demonstrate more of Chris Aiden’s endless inventiveness and wit, and they confirm his growing reputation as an unusual literary voice of darkly magical comic tales. “These stories are funny and bizarre without giving over to cutesiness or kitsch . . . The darkness in Adrian’s writing is balanced with compassion, wit, and the haunting, eerie scenarios he constructs are only eclipsed by the characters—the children, spirits, and Civil War reenactors—with which he fills them.”—The Portland Mercury “To read Chris Adrian is to take part in the exciting process of watching a talented and original writer gain mastery of his powerful gifts.”—Myla Goldberg, The New York Times Book Review
“Adrian, himself a pediatrician and seminary student, is a lucid, brilliant fortune-teller. He unveils our demons, who, in the wake of their visitations upon these children, reveal something you can only call the face of God.”—Tom Chiarella, Esquire
“He has a strong following among the literary magazine set, and with his latest book he has a chance to win a mainstream audience. A Better Angel stands to outperform its predecessors, as many of its stories have appeared in places like the New Yorker and the Paris Review, and at a little over 200 pages, it's eminently accessible.”—Lauren Mechling, The Wall Street Journal
"In these stories Mr. Adrian paints beautiful still lifes of near-dead bodies among ghosts and angels, prompting questions about what lies beneath the body, the wax mannequin, or what lies beyond—beyond the modern scene of death, the dirty, fluorescent hospital."—Lily Swistel, The New York Observer
"Adrian's language is powered by unflinching detail (a dead man's open eyes have 'the look of spoiling grapes'), and he's at his best when in the sickroom, as in ‘The Sum of Our Parts’, in which a comatose soul trails the living around the hospital where her body lies dying. The title story, which combines dark comedy and deep pathos, is not only the standout of this volume but also one of the best stories published in recent memory. Adrian has been known as a writer's writer, but with this book, readers would do well to stake their claim."—Radhika Jones, Time
"The new collection of short stories by Boston novelist Chris Adrian (The Children's Hospital) reads like the off-kilter tales of a mad man who sits next to you in the waiting area of a hospital emergency room insisting the world's about to end. His creepy accounts of profound illness, violent aggression, strange visions and hovering doom resonate, and you wind up thinking of them for days afterward. In Adrian's case, we're dealing with a great mind, not a lost one. The material in A Better Angel is close to Adrian's heart, drawn from his background as a pediatrician and divinity school student. Each deals in one way or another with the sometimes uneasy alliance of body and soul, nature and the supernatural."—Tyrone Beason, The Seattle Times
"Drug-addled doctors, evil teenagers and winged spirits are among the characters in Chris Adrian’s new volume of eccentric and fabulistic stories, A Better Angel . . . Adrian admits that his work at the hospital often inspires his fiction, but he radically transforms events from his everyday experience, fitting them into a richly surreal framework . . . Like their creator, the characters in A Better Angel tend to channel their grim obsessions into transformative creativity: One, a teenager who’s spent much of her life in the hospital, is writing a book about diseased animals. When an incompetent intern asks, 'Do you think anyone would buy that?' she answers, 'There’s a book about shit. . . . Why not one about sickness and death?' This could be an epigraph for much of Adrian’s brutal yet beautiful world, where the sometimes horrifying realities of the body mingle with the pleasures of fantasy."—Elizabeth Isadora Gold, Time Out New York
"They are eternal questions with no easy answers—indeed, no universally agreed-upon answers at all. Why does evil exist? Why does God—if God exists—allow the innocent to suffer? Are there spirits emanating from some alternate universe that can instruct us, harangue us, punish us, save us? They are questions that a doctor or student of theology might ponder. Chris Adrian, who is both a pediatric oncologist and a student at Harvard Divinity School, has given them much thought, and because he is a writer of uncommon imagination and expressiveness, he presents them in original and gripping ways. Any of those callings might serve an ordinary seeker of truth, but Adrian is pursuing all three to find answers. Also the author of two novels, Gob's Grief and The Children's Hospital, he here offers nine short stories, linked by themes. Most involve children who are emotionally wounded or physically ill. Many hinge on the deaths of relatives and their lingering effect on surviving children. Some take place in hospitals. A few echo powerfully the horror of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. All are written in language so beautiful and compelling that we go willingly where Adrian takes us, despite the pain and terror an...
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A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE
In this inventive collection of stories, Chris Adrian treads the terrain of human suffering--illness, regret, mourning, sympathy--in the most unusual ways. A bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother. A boy tries to contact the spirit of his dead father and finds himself talking to the Devil instead. A ne'er-do-well pediatrician returns home to take care of his dying father, all the while under the scrutiny of an easily-disappointed heavenly agent. With A Better Angel's cast of living and dead characters, at once otherworldly and painfully human, Adrian has created a haunting work of spectral beauty and wit.
Chris Adrian is the author Gob’s Grief and The Children’s Hospital. He is a Fellow in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco. A New York Times Book Review Notable Book
The stories in A Better Angel describe the terrain of human suffering—illness, regret, mourning, sympathy—in the most unusual of ways. In “Stab,” a bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother. In “Why Antichrist?” a boy tries to contact the spirit of his dead father and finds himself talking to the Devil instead. In the title story, a ne’er do well pediatrician returns home to take care of his dying father, all the while under the scrutiny of an easily disappointed heavenly agent.
The stories in A Better Angel, some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and McSweeney’s, demonstrate more of Chris Aiden’s endless inventiveness and wit, and they confirm his growing reputation as an unusual literary voice of darkly magical comic tales. “Adrian, himself a pediatrician and seminary student, is a lucid, brilliant fortune-teller. He unveils our demons, who, in the wake of their visitations upon these children, reveal something you can only call the face of God.”—Tom Chiarella, Esquire
“To read Chris Adrian is to take part in the exciting process of watching a talented and original writer gain mastery of his powerful gifts.”—Myla Goldberg, The New York Times Book Review
“Adrian's is a haunted, haunting territory of troubled spirits, where redemption is sought—and may, occasionally, be found . . . There are certainly strains of comedy in Adrian's darkness.”—Sylvia Brownrigg, The New York Times Book Review
“Mr. Adrian is a gifted, courageous writer, and with this collection he continues to take far-reaching risks.”—S. Kirk Walsh, The New York Times
“He has a strong following among the literary magazine set, and with his latest book he has a chance to win a mainstream audience. A Better Angel stands to outperform its predecessors, as many of its stories have appeared in places like the New Yorker and the Paris Review, and at a little over 200 pages, it's eminently accessible.”—Lauren Mechling, The Wall Street Journal
“Adrian, himself a pediatrician and seminary student, is a lucid, brilliant fortune-teller. He unveils our demons, who, in the wake of their visitations upon these children, reveal something you can only call the face of God.”—Tom Chiarella, Esquire
“Astonishing . . . [A] poisoned, unflinching redemption is held forward in the pared beauty of Adrian's unshowy, lambent prose and gives the collection almost a bottomless depth.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“His best work yet . . . Not one of the stories teeters out of control. They are strange, beautiful, and unforgettable. Like Kafka, Poe, and Salman Rushdie, Adrian knows the best way to bring the miraculous to life is to write it realistically.”—The Boston Globe
"In these stories Mr. Adrian paints beautiful still lifes of near-dead bodies among ghosts and angels, prompting questions about what lies beneath the body, the wax mannequin, or what lies beyond—beyond the modern scene of death, the dirty, fluorescent hospital."—Lily Swistel, The New York Observer
"Adrian's language is powered by unflinching detail (a dead man's open eyes have 'the look of spoiling grapes'), and he's at his best when in the sickroom, as in 'The Sum of Our Parts', in which a comatose soul trails the living around the hospital where her body lies dying. The title story, which combines dark comedy and deep pathos, is not only the standout of this volume but also one of the best stories published in recent memory. Adrian has been known as a writer's writer, but with this book, readers would do well to stake their claim."—Radhika Jones, Time
"The new collection of short stories by Boston novelist Chris Adrian (The Children's Hospital) reads like the off-kilter tales of a mad man who sits next to you in the waiting area of a hospital emergency room insisting the world's about to end. His creepy accounts of profound illness, violent aggression, strange visions and hovering doom resonate, and you wind up thinking of them for days afterward. In Adrian's case, we're dealing with a great mind, not a lost one. The material in A Better Angel is close to Adrian's heart, drawn from his background as a pediatrician and divinity school student. Each deals in one way or another with the sometimes uneasy alliance of body and soul, nature and the supernatural."—Tyrone Beason, The Seattle Times
"Drug-addled doctors, evil teenagers and winged spirits are among the characters in Chris Adrian’s new volume of eccentric and fabulistic stories, A Better Angel . . . Adrian admits that his work at the hospital often inspires his fiction, but he radically transforms events from his everyday experience, fitting them into a richly surreal framework . . . Like their creator, the characters in A Better Angel tend to channel their grim obsessions into transformative creativity: One, a teenager who’s spent much of her life in the hospital, is writing a book about diseased animals. When an incompetent intern asks, 'Do you think anyone would buy that?' she answers, 'There’s a book about shit. . . . Why not one about sickness and death?' This could be an epigraph for much of Adrian’s brutal yet beautiful world, where the sometimes horrifying realities of the body mingle with the pleasures of fantasy."—Elizabeth Isadora Gold, Time Out New York
"They are eternal questions with no easy answers—indeed, no universally agreed-upon answers at all. Why does evil exist? Why does God—if God exists—allow the innocent to suffer? Are there spirits emanating from some alternate universe that can instruct us, harangue us, punish us, save us? They are questions that a doctor or student of theology might ponder. Chris Adrian, who is both a pediatric oncologist and a student at Harvard Divinity School, has given them much thought, and because he is a writer of uncommon imagination and expressiveness, he presents them in original and gripping ways. Any of those callings might...
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