A review by tdstorm
A Better Angel by Chris Adrian

1.0

It's not that Chris Adrian is a bad writer. In fact, he's good at evoking emotion. The problem is that the emotions he tries to evoke are not ones I want to be feeling. Too many of these stories were either disgusting or sadistic or just plain depressing. Reading Adrian's book just reinforces that my perhaps-overly-traditional aesthetic makes me crave redemptive moments and hope. He has such great premises: these are tales about a literal guardian angel, a civil war re-enactor, a kid who finds out he's the antichrist, a changeling. But the stories move from their very captivating, albeit dark beginnings ("Someone was murdering the small animals in our neighborhood" ("Stab"); "I'm in fourth grade and fucked-up" ("High Speeds")), to even darker endings. These tales thus become the opposite of enchanting. I define enchantment as conjuring magic from the ordinary. Adrian conjures bleakness from the potentially redemptive. He's a pediatrician, and I'm sure he witnesses lots of depressing shit. So his conjuring bleakness from redemptive possibility might be more true to life. But I don't like it.