short story review

I’m going out on a limb here and am recommending both a novel and a collection of short stories that I haven’t read yet.  They are The Children’s Hospital and A Better Angel, by Chris Adrian.

I just finished Adrian’s uncollected short story “A Tiny Feast” in the 20 April New Yorker.  It’s a story about a child with leukemia, told from the perspective of his immortal parents – for you see, the boy is a changeling, and they’ve never had to deal with sickness before.  I don’t want to say anything else; my description does not do this story justice.

Chris Adrian is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, something that I hold in such high regard (only pertaining to short stories, don’t even get me started on the tragic literary disaster that is Thisbe Nissen) that almost nothing else ever trumps it.  However, he also has completed a pediatric residency at UCSF, is attending Harvard Divinity School, and is finishing up a fellowship in pediatric hematology oncology.  All of these experiences have informed his writing; he makes what could be a horrifying and depressing event into something magical and transcendent.

I’ll probably devour A Better Angel this weekend, and then I’ll spend the rest of the month hunting down his uncollected shorts.

If you are so inclined, you can read the version of “A Tiny Feast” as published in the New Yorker here.