The Children’s Hospital is a book that asks a lot of its readers. It begins with the Earth being flooded under seven miles of water, and the only surviving ark is literally a children’s hospital, kept afloat by a preserving angel, who also adds new rooms, replicators that can provide anything the survivors need and ghostly, uncomforting intonations of comfort that emanate from the PA system, floors and walls. There are three other angels as well, although they are not revealed to most of the hospital’s inhabitants: the recording angel, who is the book’s invisible narrator; the accusing angel; and the destroying angel, whose ominous title is well-deserved. The hospital’s Noah is a medical student named Jemma, who discovers she has the power to heal all of the young passengers’ horrendous diseases and afflictions, and that she is pregnant with the post-apocalypse’s first baby.

Thus, this is the Flood and the Messiah and the Armageddon stories all rolled up into one, and it all would be a bit much if not for Adrian’s deft use of language. In the 600 or so pages of this dense novel, he evokes an otherwordly, magical atmosphere that slowly and seductively lures the reader in and suspends that disbelief up high. Despite the bureaucratic quibblings of the hospital staff that persist even in the End Times, this is not a story that is meant to be taken literally. It is allegory and mythology, plain and simple, so don’t spend too much time wondering about those replicators.

In fact, the allusions and references of The Children’s Hospital are so densely packed I won’t attempt to enumerate them, but only encourage you to read the book and discover them for yourself, and to stick with it for a while after the point where you want to give up. The Children’s Hospital takes its time in weaving its spell, and if my only quibble with it is that it probably could have used some judicious editing, it’s a mild quibble.

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