Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian absolutely fascinated me. The premise of the book is that the earth is covered in 7 miles of water after a storm. The only survivors are the people who were in a children's hospital at the time. There are about 1000 survivors - a couple of doctors, quite a few med students, the hospital staff, the patients, and family members of some of the patients. The hospital is able to stay afloat thanks to the intervention of a very creepy angel. The angel provides for the survivors' every need, want, or whim; she just won't tell anyone why they survived or when they will see dry land again. Anyone can have assistance from the angel as long as they will give her a name. I would name this angel Hal - and if you don't get the reference to Hal, you might be too young to be surfing the web unsupervised.
At first life goes on pretty much as it did before the disaster, after all this is a hospital full of sick children. But eventually the residents begin thinking about other things, such as building a community, finding families for the orphaned children, and deciding which doctor should get the lead in the next musical. Of course there are crises to resolve and a surprise or two at the end, but you'll have to read the book to find out more.
I give this book 5 bookmarks. I like Adrian's style of writing, love surrealism, the characters were compelling, and the story kept me hooked. My cat gives this novel 20 dead mice because for 3 days I barely moved. My dogs give it a big stinky pile of doggie-doo because for 3 days I barely moved.
At first life goes on pretty much as it did before the disaster, after all this is a hospital full of sick children. But eventually the residents begin thinking about other things, such as building a community, finding families for the orphaned children, and deciding which doctor should get the lead in the next musical. Of course there are crises to resolve and a surprise or two at the end, but you'll have to read the book to find out more.
I give this book 5 bookmarks. I like Adrian's style of writing, love surrealism, the characters were compelling, and the story kept me hooked. My cat gives this novel 20 dead mice because for 3 days I barely moved. My dogs give it a big stinky pile of doggie-doo because for 3 days I barely moved.
1 comment:
love the Hal reference. evidently that means i'm old enough to surf the internet unsupervised (sadly).
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