The Lazarus Child

“Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself to become a new person.”
― Gerard Way

Robert Mawson is a pen name of the author Robert Radcliffe whose historical novels I have largely enjoyed so I was curious as to how he would handle a very different subject matter.

This books weaves two stories together. The first takes the Heywood family through the consequences of a near-fatal accident to their youngest child Frankie which was witnessed by her 12-year-old brother Ben. Frankie is hit by a bus on the way to school and knocked into a deep coma.
Rather than a fairly conventional treatment of right to life and euthanasia issues or perhaps the locked-in syndrome show more from the point of view of the patient as in Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got his Gun", Mawson takes a very different path. Exploring the consequences of trying to bring Frankie back - Lazarus-like - from what doctors clinically describe as a persistent vegetative state.

Brilliant young American psychiatrist Lizzie, who herself lost a younger sibling when a child, has established the Perlman Clinic specifically to rescue children in Frankie's condition believes that she can bring Frankie back. However, a sizeable part of the American medical establishment are against Lizzie and her methods despite the fact that she has had some limited success.This is the second thread of this book.

On the whole Mawson is compelling, even daring, and the story rattles on at a fairly good pace. At times you feel for Frankie's parents, Jack and Alison, and the unenviable situation they find themselves in, not to mention the difficult decisions they are faced with. However, what lets the book down generally is that some parts seem to work better than others. This seems apparent in the first chapter alone. The placement of the innocent image of the rag doll at the scene of the accident is wonderful. Then it swiftly switches to the father Jack waking up on the office settee because he slept with his secretary and has been banished fro the family home meaning Ben must walk Frankie to school. This in turns to why Ben witnesses and blames himself for Frankie's accident. However, although we know why Jack is unable to walk the kids to school we are none the wiser why Alison did not fill the void.

Character development is generally poor as was treatment of the protest at the clinic IMHO which quite frankly I'm not sure was totally necessary. However, what really let me down was the psychic journey that culminates with the end of the book. The title itself gives the ending away so is fairly predictable and did Mawson really need so detailed description and to take so long to get there?

On the whole I found the book OK running along at a quick enough pace to keep me interested but a little more care with the characterisation and a little judicious editing would have made it more thought provoking. Or it could just simply be me. show less

Interesting book, although not for the faint-hearted. Within seconds of finishing it I realized how much disbelief I had suspended to enter into the story. But if it lasts while reading, that is the main thing.

Quite an interesting book, verging on sci-fi and fantasy. A good tale, but far too much meandering in fantasy landscapes, described at great length and interfering with the plot.

Bringing a baby back from the dead is a weird topic for a book...but this book did raise some interesting ethical questions.

Quite a fast read, so the 400 odd pages went surprisingly quickly. [return][return]Frankie - the young daughter - gets knocked down on the way to school. and goes into a coma. Finally, after months without any progress, there's a glimmer of hope in a controversial clinic in the US, who unfortunately are having their own problems

Lazaruskind is een indrukwekkende vertelling over hoop en wanhoop, beproeving en genezing - en een onvergetelijke en schitterend verhaal over grenzeloze moed het het vermogen tot het brengen van offers.

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