Christopherseelie's review
Gob's Grief: A Novel
by Chris Adrian
as long as you're keeping an eye on him, you should move directly on to "The Children's Hospital", his novel which was published last year by McSweeney's. a remarkable book...a fully imagined personal mythology, told in snippets and bursts of revelation that ask more questions than are ultimately answered (but in a positive sense). bogged down at times in hospital details, it's nevertheless sure to please.
Christopherseelie's review
Gob's Grief: A Novel by Chris Adrian
Christopherseelie's review
rating:
A book that sits ambiguously between epic, lyric, and science fiction. Though it's light on the science, often invoking magic as a deus ex machina, it is actually quite heavy on the medicine practices and beliefs of the era.
Grief is the theme that binds all the major characters of this story, tho each one's grief is different and taken on different effects. Interestingly enough, Chris Adrian wrote this out of his own grief for his brother's death. For all its history, its fantasy, and its pathos, truly this book is one of the best examinations of grief upon the living. In this way it is ahistorical.
What I like most about the different griefs of the characters, is that some are world encompassing (Walt Whitman), while others are self-absorbing, limiting, and ultimately self-destructive (Gob).
If your into biography, Adrian wrote this grand work (one of the grandest I've read pre-dating 1969) while in medical school.
I'm keeping an eye on this writer.
Grief is the theme that binds all the major characters of this story, tho each one's grief is different and taken on different effects. Interestingly enough, Chris Adrian wrote this out of his own grief for his brother's death. For all its history, its fantasy, and its pathos, truly this book is one of the best examinations of grief upon the living. In this way it is ahistorical.
What I like most about the different griefs of the characters, is that some are world encompassing (Walt Whitman), while others are self-absorbing, limiting, and ultimately self-destructive (Gob).
If your into biography, Adrian wrote this grand work (one of the grandest I've read pre-dating 1969) while in medical school.
I'm keeping an eye on this writer.
as long as you're keeping an eye on him, you should move directly on to "The Children's Hospital", his novel which was published last year by McSweeney's. a remarkable book...a fully imagined personal mythology, told in snippets and bursts of revelation that ask more questions than are ultimately answered (but in a positive sense). bogged down at times in hospital details, it's nevertheless sure to please.