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    Great Night
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    Great Night
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    Great Night
    Ebook412 pages6 hours

    Great Night

    By Chris Adrian

    3/5

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    Unavailable in your country

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    About this ebook

    One Midsummer’s Eve, 2008, three people, each on the run from a failed relationship, are trapped in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park on their way to a party. And on this night, something awful is happening in the faerie kingdom. In a fit of sadness over the end of her marriage and the death of her adopted son, Titania has set loose an ancient menace, and the chaos that ensues upends and threatens the lives of mortals and immortals alike. The three heartbroken lovers become lost in the park, under the park and within the memories of the people they lost or drove away, and each will remember through the course of the night that this is not the first time their lives have been touched by magic. Suffering an all-too-human despair, and in thrall to an old enemy, Titania puts all the resources of her kingdom at the disposal of a homeless man who thinks he can bring down the sinister mayor of San Francisco by staging a musical production of Soylent Green. Before the night ends the mortals are caught, the show is staged and Titania discovers, at great cost, a way to undo the menace she’s set free, if not to undo her grief.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 26, 2011
    ISBN9781443405751
    Unavailable
    Great Night
    Author

    Chris Adrian

    CHRIS ADRIAN is the author of Gob’s Grief, The Children’s Hospital and A Better Angel, which was selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. Adrian, a fellow in pediatric hematology and oncology at the University of California and a Ph.D. student at Harvard Divinity School, was also selected as one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” to watch.

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    Reviews for Great Night

    3/5

    58 ratings6 reviews

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    • 2/5
      In this retelling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream Titania, queen of the fairies, has been immobilized with inconsolable grief over the death of her changeling son. Her grief is so great that she has become estranged from her husband, Oberon, and, in her despair, she has unleashed Puck, the only creature who almost bested Titania in combat. While these events are occurring under the hill, three lonely, lovelorn humans have chosen to take a shortcut through San Francisco's Buena Vista Park, only to become entrapped within its boundaries, which includes Oberon and Titiania's realm.I was drawn to this book because A Midsummer's Night Dream is one of my favorite Shakespeare's play. I found the fantasy in this urban fantasy more like magical realism, which I enjoy. However, the number of characters in this story was difficult to track made only more confusing with the various back stories of the humans and a troupe of homeless actors in the park rehearsing a musical based on the science fiction movie, Soylent Green ("Soylent Green is people!"). I frequently found my mind in its own midsummer's night dream.
    • 2/5
      I love Chris Adrian, but I never got into this book. Very disappointing.
    • 4/5
      Man. If I only had two words to describe this book, they would be "whimsical" and "heartwrenching." It was like the movie "hook" plus sex scenes and a lot of death and sadness, plus a touch of Tom Robbins wryness. I wasn't sure at first, the first 50 pages are a bit slow, but after that I couldn't put it down.

      The author went to Harvard Divinity school, got his MFA from Iowa and is also a doctor (pediatric oncology). Kind of amazing. I want to read "The Children's Hospital" next.
    • 2/5
      A bit of a dud. The one interesting device this book has going for it is importing a darker version of the magic characters from "A Midsummer Night's Dream", but this is squandered among a cast of mortals with teenager emotions that the reader has no reason to care for.
    • 4/5
      Well, this isn't a perfect book. The plot is confusing, a few characters could have been excised, and the book is repetitive and perhaps a little hard to follow at times. Adrian's style is a bit complex and long-winded for me. Yet the book was so interesting that it carried me along anyway. It's really creative and somehow manages to be original, even though it's based on a Midsummer Night's Dream.The highlight of the book for me was a fantastic section dealing with the illness of Oberon and Titania's adopted human son. The book is worth reading just for that.
    • 4/5
      Adrian explores the geography of loss in his retelling of a Midsummer Night's Dream. I liked the original style and was haunted by his images of lost children. But, it didn't reach the bar set by my favorites so far this year, The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht and Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. I will read more by this author.