The Ninth Life of Louis Drax: A Novel by Liz Jensen

From the Publisher

Coming soon as a major motion picture by Anthony Minghella, Oscar-winning director of The English Patient

Meet Louis Drax, the Amazing Accident-Prone Boy.

Louis Drax is a boy like no other. He is brilliant and strange, and every year something violent seems to happen to him. His psychologist is baffled, and his mother lives in a constant state of panic. He has always managed to survive-to land on his feet, like a cat. But cats have only nine lives, and Louis has used up eight, one for every year.

On his ninth birthday, Louis goes on a picnic with his parents and falls off a cliff. The details are shrouded in mystery. Louis's mother is shell-shocked; his father has vanished. And after some confusion Louis himself, miraculously alive but deep in a coma, arrives at Dr. Pascal Dannachet's celebrated coma clinic.

Was the fall really an accident? If anyone knows, they're not telling. Until one day, still deep within his coma, Louis meets the bandaged figure who calls himself Gustave, and begins to tell his tale...

The Ninth Life of Louis Drax is the story of a family falling apart, told in the vivid voices of its comatose son and Dr. Dannachet as he is drawn into the Draxes' circle. Full of astonishing twists and turns, this is a masterful tale of the secrets the human mind can hide.

Publishers Weekly

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. (Jan.) Forecast: Like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and Life of Pi, this novel explores big ideas through the fantastic adventures of a boy-protagonist. Early enthusiasm-film rights have been optioned by Miramax for direction by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient); rights have been sold in 11 countries; and the book is a BOMC, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild selection-bodes well for sales. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

For everybody who thought they'd never see another novel like The Lovely Bones, a neurologist in Provence struggles to get a comatose nine-year-old to tell what put him into a persistent vegetative state. Precociously acerbic Louis Drax has always been accident-prone. The Caesarian section that gave him birth nearly killed his mother. He's survived food poisoning, salmonella, tetanus, botulism, and meningitis. Louis's luck seems to run out on the day his estranged parents reunite long enough to take him to the Auvergne to celebrate his ninth birthday. Their picnic ends when Louis tumbles over a cliff and drowns in the river below while Pierre Drax runs away. But Louis hasn't really drowned, as an alert morgue attendant notices that night. For months after his return from the dead, Louis improves until a seizure sends him to the care of Dr. Pascal Dannachot, of the Clinique de l'Horizon, formerly l'Hopital des Incurables, and it's here that British novelist Jensen (Ark Baby, 1998, etc.), letting Louis and Dannachot take turns telling the story, heats things up. Dannachot's unorthodox therapies don't succeed in enticing Louis out of his coma, but his probe of Louis's last day releases a torrent of dark secrets about Pierre and Natalie Drax. And as Louis, who has no intention of returning to a world of bickering parents and mocking schoolmates, enjoys the balm of new friendship with Gustave, the spectral figure who welcomes him to his ninth life, the intimacy the unsuspecting doctor seeks with both his young patient and the boy's inconsolable mother turns toxic. A series of letters ostensibly written by the comatose boy accuses Dannachot of designs on Natalie Drax and warns of diredevelopments-though few readers will imagine the calamities still to come. By turns disarmingly comical, absorbingly suspenseful, and finally shattering. Film rights to Miramax, to be adapted and directed by Anthony Minghella; Book-of-the-Month Club/Doubleday Book Club/Mystery Guild selection. Agent: Clare Alexander/Gillon Aitken Associates

Product Details