STRANGE ANGELS - Hardcover

Koja, Kathe

3.75

351 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385308922 ISBN 13: 9780385308922

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1994

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Kathe Koja's shattering new novel, Strange Angels, is a dark, fascinating story of art, madness, and obsession.
Grant is a freelance photographer who has come up against an artistic block. When he sees the crayon drawings done by a schizophrenic man named Robin, Grant is immediately fascinated by Robin's genius, hungry for the subtle truth that seems hidden in the arcing, crossing lines.
Completely obsessed, Grant feels it's his mission to help Robin fully realize his artistic potential. He persuades Robin to check out of the hospital and move in with him. He encourages Robin to draw episodes from the most disturbed periods of his life. But Robin becomes more and more withdrawn until he doesn't want to draw anymore.
Then Grant realizes the transcendent truth Robin holds is not to be found in his art, but in Robin himself. He must go deeper and deeper into Robin. Together they must explore altered states, must undergo sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation. Robin deteriorates further. Gradually Grant becomes convinced that Robin is transforming into something new, some kind of angel.
On a par with Katherine Dunn or Donna Tartt, Kathe Koja is a powerful young writer whose distinctive voice will hold you spellbound as you take a journey into darkness unlike any you've been on before.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

A gratuitously bizarre, reader-unfriendly tome by the author of Skin (1993); you can almost see through it, despite the murky prose. Grant Cotto is a photographer with a serious case of artist's block and a lot of time on his hands. When he sees the tortured drawings of Robin, an institutionalized schizophrenic under the care of his art therapist girlfriend, Johanna, the fun begins in earnest. Grant decides to help Robin free his artistic inner self by encouraging his drawing, a talent the author intimates is part of Robin's illness. Naturally, Johanna disapproves of this manipulation of Robin, and after a few heated exchanges, she moves out. Now misguided Grant can enjoy some real destruction. He encourages Robin to leave Clearwater Psychiatric, go off his medication, and move in, so that he may devote himself slavishly to producing drawings of fascinating, twisted beauty. Soon, a strange kind of co-dependency develops, and Grant's interest shifts from the drawings to Robin himself. The two share all kinds of adventures, including experiments with sensory and sleep deprivation and a visit to an Evangelical Pentecostal meeting in order to assuage Robin's growing fixation with angels. At the church, they meet Saskia, also a Clearwater outpatient, and before long they're spending a lot of time at her ``Holiday House,'' so named because she won't take down her Christmas decorations. Of course, an odd triangle develops, but the unmedicated Robin begins to fall apart, starving himself and resisting help from his roomies so that he may die and join the angels. With the exception of a sensitive, if somewhat drawn-out description of Robin's death, Koja portrays her characters as one-dimensional losers. Additionally, the story is laden with what aspires to be foreshadowing--too bad there's so little action to foreshadow. Strange, indeed. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Writing with a pretentious, almost adolescent sensibility and a bad case of logorrhea, Koja ( Bad Brains ) whines unremittingly in a single-pitched, overwrought stream of consciousness that will probably alienate most readers. The story concerns out-of-work Pennsylvania photographer Grant Cotto and his narcissistic infatuation with Robin, a certified schizophrenic who is being treated by Cotto's therapist girlfriend. Cotto thinks his own anguished sense of futility will be remedied if he can partake of the startling visions Robin expresses in his artwork, so he embarks on a self-serving plan to wean the deeply troubled patient from doctors, therapists and medication, and to unite with him spiritually in a quest for a new perspective on life. At the high point of his experiments, Cotto becomes convinced that Robin is being transformed into an angel and will soon disclose rare and wonderful insights. When Robin goes totally mad instead and starves himself to death, Cotto's conscience prickles, but his greater sorrow is over having missed the revelations promised by Robin's dementia. Though Koja's premise is interesting enough, her characters are one-dimensional monomaniacs engaged in a disturbingly simple-minded, voyeuristic search for altered states in bona fide pathology.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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