The Children’s Hospital By: Chris Adrian

This is my first “real” review, and I’m still learning, so do forgive and feel free to critique any element of it that you want to. This book is troubling to review. On one level the writing and the characters are dry, tedious, and underdeveloped, almost in a biblical way. There wasn't much sympathy or involvedness in any of the characters, and I happened to dislike the main two characters. The main protagonist is whiny almost, and seems like a ready made victim. The only good character is the troubled little boy with psychological, problems.

It seemed to me that Adrian lost interest after the first chapters and this could have been a better short story, which is why it should not have been a 615 page long epic novel. The beginning starts off tolerably, but it gets more and more tedious, and instead getting drawn further into the story as it goes along, I was driven away; I lost more and more interest along the way until I was just reading it by sheer will.

The structure of the novel started to fall apart somewhat during towards the end of the middle of the story and never really came back together. Not to ruin it for you, but there is a lot of death in this novel, more death actually than in all other novels I have read combined. The deaths of most of the dozens and dozens of side characters pushes focus back on the main ones, and the tragic and sad ending leaves one mentally disturbed and one keeps mulling, contemplating over it. In terms of emotionally affecting me as a reader, it's in the top three of all the books I've ever read, (which is not a huge list, but give me a break, I'm 16). The ending is also somewhat confusing, and unsatisfying. You’ve forced your way through this great epic, finally managed to start sympathizing with the main character, and boom, you’re hit in the face with this maudlin, dreary ending.

Certain twists I saw a mile away. Her brother being her guardian angel, huh, shocker! Her brother was in fact a questionable facet of the novel. The flashbacks were by far the driest and most terrible, and most difficult sections of the book to read, and the brother was a remote figure who I couldn’t find any real humanity, and interest in. The semi-theology in the book is confusing, crazy, and highly merciless, bloody, and disturbing. It all revolves around this one character, her brother, who could have been so much more, but was not developed fully by the author.

That’s not to say that the book doesn’t have moments. Towards the end though everything is spiraling down the tube, and you can begin to see that this is going to be one of the darkest books that you’ve ever read, many true nuggets come out. The young, schizophrenic boy and his relationship with her provided many moments of angst, sadness, and compassion that had not penetrated through thus far in the novel. The final weeks of her relationship, the ending, are almost too grotesque to take, and generate such brilliant horror, compassion, and disappointment in the final outcome. These were all for me some of the novels better attributes.

Some of Adrian's ideas, descriptions, symbolisms, and topics of discussion in this book are brilliant, but they are not enough to make it a great book. This would get two stars, but the very fact that the book brings up so much thought, so much emotion makes it three. That you have to think really hard to decide what to say about it, or whether you liked it or not is really an extremely positive attribute. Though, like I said, this whole book could have been so much more. So much symbolism is lost on me, and I am simply discombobulated by attempts to figure out what some things mean or represent, (for instance a dream she has in a flashback where a demonic, Religiously condemning Santa hands her a box for answering his question right, had she been wrong, he would have killed her).

But, I digress. I strongly encourage people to read this book and see for themselves. It will have a tremendous impact on you, one way or the other, and it makes you think a lot about. It's one of those books you enjoy a lot more after you've finished reading it, and it's sat in your head for a long time. This is really one book I can’t seem to shake, when I finished I just sat down in my quiet room and mulled over it a long time. I spent the next few days knocking it around in my head, a little quieter than normal, and unable to stop thinking about it. Even today, almost a year later, when I recall it, it comes back with startling clarity, and can invoke the same emotion, the same dark meditation on it all.

To sum it all up, I really can’t review this novel for you, you need to read it for yourself in order to experience. I hate it, and love it, and it’ll affect everybody differently. You have to read it to get that affect, to find how you feel about it. From your outlook on the book might be completely different than how I have thought of it, and mused here on it.

Jacob Waalk