Ninth Life of Louis Drax

Because I have to read a book when I hear they’ve made a movie of it, I read Ninth Life of Louis Drax, by Liz Jenson. This book gets 3.6 stars on Goodreads, or at least it did when I last checked, and the movie previews are all over the television.

Book cover for "Ninth Life of Louis Drax" by Liz Jensen.

This story of Louis Drax takes place simultaneously from two perspectives:

  1. Louis Drax – in a deep coma after falling from a cliff while on a birthday picnic with his family. He has always had serious accidents, and has always been a little too curious and a little too intelligent. He never quite fit in with his peers, who call him Wacko Boy.
  2. Dr. Pascal Dannachet – a somewhat unconventional doctor who runs a coma clinic specifically for individuals who are in comas for a prolonged period of time. He believes his patients respond positively to environmental factors and has had some remarkable successes in his career. Louis’s condition deteriorates at the main hospital, so he is transferred to Dr. Dannachet’s clinic as a last resort.

The very brief summary of the book is this: Louis’ fall off the cliff is questionable, but how will they figure out what really happened?

I haven’t seen this movie. (Insert “duh” here – the movie is not out in theaters yet and I do not have any connections to Hollywood that would grant me an advance screening of any movie.) So, if you would rather watch a movie than read the book (hello, my husband!) or don’t want any spoilers, go away. I’ll try not to give away too many spoilers, but . . . ugh, this book.

Actually, if I really didn’t want to give away any spoilers, I wouldn’t even write this review. At some parts, it felt like the book was literally shouting spoilers about itself.

“Hey, look – a sad, pretty, broken woman over here – ooh, and an unhappily married doctor over there!”

“This boy has crazy, near-death experiences on a regular basis, and has had them since he was an infant. It’s all totally accidental and, thankfully, he is surrounded by his very-protective mother at all times.”

Officially we have no idea where the dad is, but there’s this thing the boy trusts even though we can’t see his face.”

“Louis says his mother taught him that a manipulative mother is the worst kind of person . . . but that doesn’t really mean anything.”

Still here?

Yeah. Me, too.

Is it an easy read? Yes. I read it while my husband was gone overnight on a business trip. The kids were loud and television was on. None of those things were distracting enough to make it hard to concentrate. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

Is it an interesting concept? Yes. It really has a unique take on a person’s psychology with interesting ideas, but I thought it could have been better developed. Instead, the book moves quickly – too quickly, perhaps.

Do I think it was well written? Maybe. Grammatically ,it was fine. But there were no quotation marks. Is this a new way of formatting things? Do all British writers do this now? Is it because I read this as an e-book opposed to print? If it is, I need to file a complaint with whatever board governs punctuation. I hated this. It was hard to tell when someone started talking or stopped talking as opposed to thinking. Once I got used to it and understood the situations and characters better, it got less confusing, but was still odd. I still do not like it.

Did I enjoy it? Um, no. For me, the biggest problem was that the book was way too obvious. Very early, I knew how the book would end, what would happen to all the characters, and what was really going on. And the characters were hard for me to enjoy. The doctor had [at best] questionable morals, the mother was  a wreck, and the son was . . . well, he’s nine years old, and it was hard for me to relate to a 9-year-old.

I don’t know if I’ll see this movie. I might be curious to see how they adapted it for film, though. I’d be curious to see how they adapt the parts that take place in Louis’ mind and from his perspective. And I might be curious to see what parts of books they take out or add to make a movie more exciting.

[Spoiler alert: one obvious change is the doctor, who is middle-aged in the book, with grown children and a long marriage, and is played by Jamie Dornan in the movie (who is not anywhere close to middle-aged). I’m sure the studio wants large audiences, and I’m sure Jamie Dornan is great, but it doesn’t work for me.]

But I think I’ll just wait until this movie inevitably winds up on TV and I’ll catch a snippet of it. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and someone who read the book will see the movie and write up a little comparison (and, no, it won’t be me).

Score: 5/10 . For potential.

Discussion

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