Dusting Off: “A Better Angel”

A Better Angel: Stories by Chris Adrian Farrar, Strauss and Giroux; 229 p. Posted by Tobias Carroll Chris Adrian doesn’t think small. His first novel, Gob’s Grief, concerns itself with the construction of a machine to resurrect the Civil War’s dead; his second, The Children’s Hospital, opens with the modern world swept away by deluge. Each one sprawls, blending hard-scrabble realism with outright fantasy, enmeshing historical figures in ahistorical moments, colliding mysticism and scientific rationality. The endurance of trauma and […]

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