Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

“and what if Honest Abe knew what he was talking about when he’d coined the better angels of our natures, what if he meant it literally, that our judgment at the holy gates is based on how we treat angels when chancing upon them, maybe your angel looks like a woman in a red dress, maybe it looks like a puppy, as long as the being is defenseless it serves as a test of benevolence, maybe that’s what’s happening, Cyril Bagger is being fucking tested, drilled in empathy as he was once drilled in warfare,”

-Angel Down

and okay, that was one of the wildest, most incredible books I have ever read. Angel Down is my first read by Daniel Kraus, an author who has long been on my radar, but I had yet to try. Did I read this because it just won the Pulitzer Prize? I absolutely did, and I can absolutely see why it won. Angel Down is a harrowing novel set in the Great War that tells the story of Private Cyril Bagger and his comrades as they stumble across an angel, fallen on the battlefield,

and Bagger didn’t necessarily join the war to serve his country and bring peace to the world. He did so because he’d gotten into some trouble, running cons and schemes and the army caught hold of him and made him serve,

and so far, Bagger has mostly been burying the dead. He is a gravedigger and hasn’t had to kill anyone. So when a shriek overtakes the battlefield, him and a few other low ranking members of the army are instructed to seek out the source only to find an angel has fallen from the sky,

and Bagger knows he has to save the angel, and so does Arno, a fourteen year old kid who lied about his age to be able to serve, and as the small group realizes the powers the angel possesses, they begin to fight amongst themselves to get what they want, whether it’s right or not,

and this entire book is written in a single sentence, sort of like what I’ve done here but without any periods, and at first I thought this style might be off-putting, but I got used to it in about 30 seconds and there was no going back because what you have here is one of the most incredible stories, ever,

and I am not sure how anyone can conceivably write something this insanely incredible. This story had some of the most visceral, beautiful lines I have ever read, and I think every paragraph was a gut punch of ohmygoshhowisthisgettingevenbetterallthetime, and I just do not have the words to do this book justice. It was so goddamn good, I can’t wait to read it again because I know I will get more and more on every read. I can’t recommend this book enough, and you should just read it,