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liseyp 's review for:
The 9th Life of Louis Drax
by Liz Jensen
dark
reflective
slow-paced
I’m very conflicted by this book. I chose it from my TBR shelf on the basis that it’s quite short (just over 200 pages) and so would be a good start on my aim to reduce the book backlog on my shelves. I expected to finish it in a couple of sittings, instead I’ve been largely not reading it for four days. It’s not that it’s a bad story, but I just didn’t find it as engaging as I thought I would. For a short novel the storyline dragged quite a bit, taking some time to deliver the clues about what was really going on.
Louis is a precocious nine-year-old who we mostly see through his coma-locked memories and dreams. His thought processes aren’t particularly linear and are quite sinister at times, especially his theory of the right of disposal, that if he keeps his hamster alive for more than a year or two he has the right as the owner to then kill the creature.
We also see the perspective of his doctor Pascal. He’s not a particularly sympathetic character given the way he treats his wife and falls for Louis’s mother within about 10 minutes of meeting her.
The basic plot is reasonable. If you’ve watched/read any medical dramas in the past you’ll guess what actually happened quite quickly. The slightly otherworldly aspect of Louis’s coma thinking and how Pascal engages with him could have made for a stronger story, but it us dealt with in a very light touch and then all wrapped up in the final resolution in a very short space of time.
A slightly disappointing start to my 2022 reading.