The Ninth Life of Louis Drax - Softcover

Liz Jensen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747571112 ISBN 13: 9780747571117

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2005

Synopsis

Nine-year-old Louis Drax is a problem child: bright, precocious, deceitful, and dangerously, disturbingly, accident prone. When he falls off a cliff into a ravine, the accident seems almost predestined. Louis miraculously survives - but the family has been shattered. Louis' father has vanished, his mother is paralysed by shock, and Louis lies in a deep coma from which he may never emerge. In a clinic in Provence, Dr Pascal Dannachet tries to coax Louis back to consciousness. But the boy defies medical logic, startling Dannachet out of his safe preconceptions, and drawing him inexorably into the dark heart of Louis' buried world. Only Louis holds the key to the mystery surrounding his fall - and he can't communicate. Or can he?

About this title

About the Author

LIZ JENSEN is the bestselling author of seven acclaimed novels, including the Guardian shortlisted Ark Baby, War Crimes for the Home, The Rapture, shortlisted for the Brit Award and selected as a Channel 4 TV Book Club Best Read, and, most recently The Uninvited. She has been nominated three times for the Orange  Prize for Fiction and her work has been published in more than twenty countries.  Liz Jensen lives in Wimbledon, London.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Louis Drax isn't like other children. The morbidly imaginative and sharply intuitive boy from a provincial city in France has survived eight suspicious accidents, one for each year of his life. On his ninth birthday, Louis suffers a mysterious fall from a cliff and ends up in Dr. Pascal Dannachet's experimental coma clinic, where the truth of his most recent mishap will be revealed. So begins British novelist Jensen's fourth book (War Crimes for the Home, etc.), a fiercely intelligent psychological thriller told from the alternating perspectives of the comatose Louis and the professionally conflicted Dr. Dannachet. As the French police search for Pierre Drax, the prime suspect in his son's fall, Louis negotiates the unconscious world with Gustave, his grotesque, bandaged imaginary companion, and Dr. Dannachet reluctantly falls in love with Louis's mother, Natalie. Behind the many twists and turns that ensue is a multilayered, genuinely convincing emotional drama that adds substance to the suspense. Families are torn apart, scientists are confounded by the miraculous, and the human heart unleashes its many secrets. Jensen's gift for black humor and off-kilter narratives shines throughout this page-turner, and her understanding of fractured psyches and their ability to heal is remarkable. The idiosyncrasies of her peculiar characters only make them more engaging, and at the end of Jensen's gripping tale, the reader is left eager for more.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747571112
• ISBN 13: 9780747571117
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240