Strange Angels
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Grant, an ambitious photographer, is possessed by a young mental patient's strange drawings and becomes the disturbed young artist's confidant and guardian in a relationship that pushes Grant's own sanity to the edge.
Kathe Koja’s books include The Mercury Waltz, Under the Poppy, The Cipher and Skin; her young adult novels include Buddha Boy, Talk and Kissing the Bee. Her work has been honored by the ALA, the ASPCA and with the Bram Stoker Award. Her books have been published in seven languages and optioned for film. She’s a Detroit native and lives in the area with her husband, artist Rick Lieder. She also runs Loudermilk Productions, creating site-specific immersive events including performances of Wuthering Heights, Alice in Wonderland, Faustus and her own adaptation of Under the Poppy.
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.
