Book Review

Adrian, Chris. A Better Angel: Stories.
New York: Picador, 2009.

This collection of nine stories is written by a fellow in pediatric oncology who is also a student at Harvard Divinity School. All nine stories deal on some level with themes of grief, sickness and dying, and very often the protagonists are bereaved or ill children.

In Stab a young twin bereaved by the loss of his brother befriends a homicidal girl and joins her in a killing spree of animals in the neighborhood in hopes that she can bring him closer to her brother. In The Sum of our Parts a woman who has recently attempted suicide haunts the halls of the hospital where she lays dying and divines the innermost thoughts of the staff members. In A Child's Book of Sickness and Death, a teenaged sufferer of short gut syndrome becomes a hospital regular and writes about animals suffering from unique and horrible diseases. In Why Antichrist, a bereaved teenager is befriended by a popular classmate whose father died in the 9/11 attacks who becomes obsessed with the idea that he is the Antichrist.

Adrian's stories are beautifully written and engaging and very very dark. The strangeness of his stories as well as the religious undertones present throughout are reminiscent of the short stories of Flannery O'Connor. I enjoyed reading them and would be interested in reading his previous books.