Praise for The Children's Hospital:
"Chris Adrian's life is a dedicated exploration of the things that matter most, and his writing is his companion and interlocutor, his guide and interpreter, as he travels a landscape not before seen by other eyes. And every report he makes of that world enriches and enlarges our own sense of the world we thought we knew."
—Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead
"Chris Adrian is a novelist, a doctor, a philosopher, a literary explorer, the humble clear-eyed prophet of our time. He is an eloquent anatomist of loss, naming and labeling the bones and sinews of grief; he is a comedian dressed in sackcloth, a winking Virgil leading us through the circles of our own earthly hell. But he is ultimately a healer; the genius of his writing lies in its compassion, its ability to make what is broken whole again. To read him is to be understood: to know you are not alone in your misery, your self-doubt, your sins of pride, your wild joys, your insomnia, your madness, your desire."
—Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Underwater
"Chris Adrian is truly brilliant. I'm not saying this because he's a writer, and a pediatrician, and now in divinity school. I simply believe him to be a person with a unique way of processing the world around him and the ability to communicate that vision back to us in what is often a startlingly beautiful manner."
—Nathan Englander, author of The Ministry of Special Cases
"The Children's Hospital brings the great promise of Gob's Grief to fruition; it probes the twined natures of death, grief, and sin with a rare combination of insight, longing, and oracular authority, all tempered by a sense of humor so black it burns. I suspect Chris Adrian will prove to be our culture's recording angel, our demon brother; and he is certainly one of my favorite authors writing today."
—Emily Barton, author of Brookland
"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
"The Children's Hospital has echoes of a children's book, as it takes on questions of good and evil with an earnestness rare in adult fiction, while remaining seriously fun to read; the funky everyday cohabits naturally with the miraculous."
—Shelley Jackson, Los Angeles Times
"One of the most revelatory novels in recent memory … Cleverly conceived and executed brilliantly."
—Andrew Ervin, San Francisco Chronicle
"This novel is a singular event: massive, recondite, often electrifying."
—Bookforum
"Adrian lays out a brave new world that is glorious and miraculous and horrible all at once."
—Entertainment Weekly
"Suspended between the poles of life and death, the physical and the spiritual, the real and the imagined, Adrian's vast floating world of a novel is a marvel. The Children's Hospital is intelligent, seductive and beautifully realized."
—Kit Reed, Hartford Courant
"[Adrian] is a writer of prodigious talent who holds your heart in his hands. … And despite or because of his unlikely worldview, he is irresistible. He sails into the inexplicable, seeking meaning; and the reader, gripped by curiosity and admiration, scrambles on board. Adrian's prose here is writing at its best—medical magical realism, you might call it. … We will be lucky as long as he continues to write."
—The Boston Globe
"Hip, wry and ambitious … Adrian's knack for surprise and his ability to find meaning in seemingly ridiculous situations is rewarding."
—Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"It's hard to read a book like Chris Adrian's new novel, The Children's Hospital, with its dead under seven miles of water, and not think about Katrina and tsunamis, and then backward and landward to September 11 and other traumas that, if personal, also demanded some kind of collective notice."
—The Village Voice
"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. In what may be a terminally sick world, it's good to have a doctor in the house."
—Elizabeth Hand, The Washington Post
"Elegant and enormously wondrous … 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. … [He] 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, Booklist
"This humanistic novel is a heartfelt portrayal of indefatigable spirit in the face of utter helplessness and ruin. … Adrian proves to be a suitable successor to the mythological wherewithal of Rushdie or C. S. Lewis, and the book is a solid testament to his array of talents."
—Time Out New York
"The Children's Hospital is born of both medicine and theology, a novel in which Gnosticism collides with diagnoses, and Old Testament-style cataclysms dovetail with IVs. But The Children's Hospital is, thankfully, more than that awkward marriage; it is also a thing of complex beauty and extraordinary insight … More than a vision that combines fantasy and realism, philosophy and certainty, The Children's Hospital is also about everything in between. It's been a while since religion was this fascinating and moving—just as it's been a while since there was a work of fiction this challenging, inventive, and heartfelt."
—Portland Mercury
"Chris Adrian, a pediatrician and divinity student, might be contemporary American fiction's best-kept secret."
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
"A frighteningly relevant tale of the end of the world, epic within the confines of its setting."
—Paste
for my parents
Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria;
Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.
—Augustine of Dacia
Rotulus pugillaris