The Lazarus Child
Robert Mawson, 1998
Random House
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 978055358005
Summary
It takes just an instant for a family's life to be changed forever. Now seven-year-old Frankie Heywood lies in a coma. The experts are telling her parents there is no hope. Their son is slipping away emotionally. And the Heywoods—their marriage already strained to the breaking point—are desperate. They have one last chance.
Dr. Elizabeth Chase is a brilliant neurologist who has dedicated her life to coaxing children back from the darkness. Her work is unconventional, controversial—and some say illegal. But the Heywoods have put their trust in her. They are convinced their daughter is waiting just beyond their reach. And they believe Dr. Chase is the miracle worker who can throw Frankie the lifeline that will lead their child back to them. But not even miracles occur without a price. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Robert Radcliffe
• Born—1956
• London, England, UK
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Suffolk, England
Robert Mawson has worked as a journalist and copywriter, and spent ten years in the aviation industry as a commercial pilot. Widely traveled, he divides much of his time between England and France. The Lazarus Child is his second novel. (From the publisher.)
More
Rob Mawson was born and educated in London. A journalist and advertising copywriter by trade, he also spent ten years in the aviation industry as a commercial pilot. He joined publishers Christopher Little in 1993 with his first novel A Ship Called Hope, published in 1995. Two years later he sold his house and PR business and fled to France to try writing full time.
The result was the international bestseller The Lazarus Child, published in over twenty languages and with a movie version in 2004, starring Angela Bassett and Andy Garcia. In 2002 he again achieved bestseller status with his 1943 drama Under An English Heaven which he wrote under the name Robert Radcliffe. This was followed up in 2003 by a second Radcliffe book, Upon Dark Waters. Rob and his wife Kate live in rural seclusion in Suffolk. (From Christopher Little Literary Agency.)
Book Reviews
It's rare to find a page-turner with this much impact on both the pulse and the heart.
People
A real Sleeping Beauty comes haltingly to life in this slick but topical New Age thriller, the second novel (but the first to be published here) by British writer Mawson. When Alison Heywood evicts her husband, Jack, from their Cambridge, England, home for sleeping with his secretary, 12-year-old Ben has to take over the chore of walking his seven-year-old sister, Frankie, to school. After ducking into a store, he emerges to see her and her playmate Isabelle struck by a van; the accident kills Isabelle and leaves Frankie in a coma. The Heywoods decide to send her to the Perlman Institute in Virginia, run by charismatic Dr. Lizzie Chase, who occasionally has success reviving comatose patients with such controversial methods as sexual stimulation, recreational drugs and heavy metal music. The metaphor of indulging kids rather than censoring them is laid on thick in this emotionally manipulative narrative. So are the digs at the self-righteous types (led by a senator whose son died at Perlman) who try to close down the Institute. Meanwhile, Frankie's family and Lizzie's clique of friends are exceptionally clever and compassionate in their fight to keep the Institute operating. Mawson hits all the bases by weaving in whatever hot issues come to hand: alternative medicine, the "right to die" and the problems of medical bureaucracy. Yet he dilutes the climax by setting it in a dim dreamscape where hypnotized Ben fights to return Frankie from "the other side." The contemporaneous, real-world abduction of Frankie and Ben from the authorities who have occupied the Institute provides a showcase for Mawson's considerable strengths: witty dialogue, savvy characters, surprise developments and rapid pacing. Naturally, by the time the little girl comes back to life, her mum and dad have patched things up, and this three-hanky resolution may well justify the novel's pre-publication interest.
Publishers Weekly
Seven-year-old Frankie Heywood lies comatose in a London hospital after being hit by a car. Her older brother, Ben, who witnessed the accident, blames himself and becomes emotionally distant. His detachment increases as Frankie's lingering condition and his parents' marital difficulties compound the family tension. Finally, the Heywoods turn for help to an American neurologist, Elizabeth Chase, whose pioneering efforts with young coma patients provide renewed hope for Frankie's recovery. Behind Dr. Chase's extreme dedication to her work, and adding to the drama, lies a childhood experience similar to Ben's from which she has never fully recovered. Risk and controversy surround Dr. Chase's experimental methods, and local protesters obtain a court injunction to close her clinic. Frankie's treatment is interrupted, counter-measures are taken, and suspense builds in the competing race for her welfare. However, a couple of gratuitously explicit sex scenes (which transform readers into voyeurs) and a few bizarre chapters depicting epic travels through consciousness do little to advance the story. Recommended for larger fiction collections. —Sheila M. Riley
Library Journal
This second novel (but first US publication) by former London advertising/PR man Mawson combines an endangered-child melodrama with a quirky collective-unconscious tale. Even before the accident, the Heywoods were not a happy family. Jack, president of a failing air-charter business in Cambridge, was recently kicked out of the house for having slept with his secretary. He's been sleeping on the couch at his office for a while now when an accident occurs that overshadows the puny irritations of marital strife: on her way to school, Jack and Alison's seven-year-old daughter, Frankie, is hit by a truck and sent into a deep coma. Her 12-year-old brother, Ben, who witnessed the accident, is so traumatized that his hair turns white and he becomes nearly catatonic. The medical establishment offers the Heywoods no hope of a cure for Frankie and little help for Ben, whose guilt prompts him to attempt suicide, so Alison turns in desperation to Dr. Elizabeth Chase, a genius neurologist who operates a highly experimental clinic for coma victims in Virginia. Chase, whose own brother died in a coma, is intrigued by Ben's apparent knowledge of what Frankie is experiencing while she is unconscious. His reports that she is fully active in a beautiful world we can't see tally with Chases suspicions that her coma patients communicate with each other in some sort of "joint plane of awareness." Welcoming the Heywoods to her clinic despite increasingly threatening attacks by fanatics, the Defense Department, and the local D.A., she urges Ben into her world of the collective unconscious to find and rescue his sister. In the end, Chase must join her young hero in this video-gamelike universe where archetypal characters offer vital provisions and "magic" tokens to help seekers. The risk is that the participant will not return; in fact, only two of three wanderers manage to reach consciousness again. Mawson's evocation of a shared "world beyond" is intriguing, but an ungainly structure and stock British characters may foil the publisher's high hopes for this commercial novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Lazarus Child
1. Young Ben feels responsible for his sister's accident. How is it possible—is it possible—to offer comfort in light of a tragic event of this magnitude? How well do you feel his parents help Frankie cope with the trauma?
2. This story pits traditional medicine against experimental methods. What are the benefits of one system versus the other? Would you have entrusted a loved one with someone like Dr. Chase? How fairly do you think Mawson presents the controversy and the characters who stand on either side of the issues?
3. Discuss Dr. Chase's motives, or particular interest, in helping the Heywood children. Do her treatment methods raise ethical or moral issues?
4. Do you believe that a world beyond consciousness exists? Might it be possible for coma patients to communicate with others on a "joint plane of awareness"? Or do you see this story as a fable...say, about a universe of unseen possibilities—or about the potential for deeper levels of connection between human beings?
5. Did the sexually explicit scenes make you uncomfortable? Are they included for sensational effect, or did you find them integral to the plot? Why do you think they are part of the story?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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