Synopses & Reviews
Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the most revelatory novels in recent memory . . . Cleverly conceived and executed brilliantly,” The Childrens Hospital is the story of a hospital preserved, afloat, after the Earth is flooded beneath seven miles of water, and a young medical student who finds herself gifted with strange powers and a frightening destiny. Jemma Claflin is a third-year medical student at the unnamed hospital that is the only thing to survive after an apocalyptic storm. Inside the hospital, beds are filled with children with the most rare and complicated childhood diseasesa sort of new-age Noahs Ark, a hospital filled with two of each kind of sickness. As Jemma and her fellow doctors attempt to make sense of what has happened to the world, and try to find the meaning of their futures, Jemma becomes a Moses figure, empowered with the mysterious ability to heal the sick by way of a green fire that shoots from her belly. Simultaneously epic and intimate, wildly imaginative and unexpectedly relevant, The Childrens Hospital is a work of stunning scope, mesmerizing detail, and wrenching emotion.
Review
"The Children's Hospital establishes Chris Adrian as a remarkable American fabulist in the tradition of Melvin Jules Bukiet and Tony Kushner, writers who define and confront the terrifying moral choices of a new century." Washington Post
Review
"This enormous book is as beautiful and chilling as the flood itself.... The reader does not sink into the depths but skips with surprising ease across the bright surface." Los Angeles Times
Review
"[A] complex deluge myth for our own time.... The music of Adrian's prose holds all of the plot's oddities in perfect alignment.... cleverly conceived and executed brilliantly." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"The Children's Hospital is intelligent, seductive and beautifully realized." Hartford Courant
Synopsis
For fans of Karen Russell or Hannah Tinti, a debut collection of stories inspired by science, medicine, and the power of healing with a magical twist.
Synopsis
Incendiary Girls explores our baser instincts with vivid imagination and dark humor. In these stories, the body becomes strange and unfamiliar terrain, a medium for transformation. In “Fundamental Laws of Nature,” a doctor considers legacy, both good and bad, when she discovers her mother has been reincarnated as a Thoroughbred mare. The infertile couple of “Primal Son” desperately wants a child, but when their wish is granted, the baby isnt recognizably human. In “When a Camel Breaks Your Heart,” a figure artist struggles to understand her lovers culture as he morphs, quite literally, into an exotic animal. And the title story, narrated by an unorthodox angel, chronicles the remarkable life of a girl just beyond deaths reach.
In Kodi Scheers hands, empathy and attachment are illuminated by the absurdity of life. When our bodies betray us, when we begin to feel our minds slip, how much can we embrace without going insane? How much can we detach ourselves before losing our humanity? Scheers stories grapple with these questions in each throbbing, choking, heartbreaking moment.
About the Author
Chris Adrian is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Gob's Grief and The Children's Hospital. A pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital, he received an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is a student at Harvard Divinity School.
Table of Contents
1. Fundamental Laws of Nature 1
2. Transplant 19
3. Miss Universe 40
4. Gross Anatomy 43
5. When a Camel Breaks Your Heart 57
6. No Monsters Here 76
7. Salt of the Earth 94
8. Modern Medicine 111
9. Primal Son 124
10. Ex-Utero 145
11. Incendiary Girls 165