The Lazarus Child

Rating:
Summary: I loved it
Review: I loved this book. I couldn't put it down. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen.

Rating:
Summary: A Touching Family Novel
Review: I read The Lazarus Child by Robert Mawson. It is a fiction novel about the strength and love of a family. I had mixed feelings about the book, but I enjoyed it for the most part.
I liked the overall story and the plot. I enjoyed the ending. I would say more about why, but that would give it away. All of the characters were well developed and I think the author wrote them all well.
There were only two things that I didn't like about this book. One of them was that the author goes overboard with the descriptions. He went into such detail in some places that I skipped ahead to the next paragraph. The other thing that I didn't like about the book was that it jumped around. Within a chapter the plot would move from Frankie's hospital room to Dr. Elizabeth Chase's childhood, and then to Jack's office. It was hard for me to keep up with the plot and what had happened in the previous chapter. It was especially hard if I put the book down for more than a day. It would have been a lot easier to keep up if I had the time and the patience to sit down and read the book in one sitting.
Despite the two low points of the book I would have to say that the overall story and the concept of the book outweighed the low points. I would also have to say that I would recommend this book to anyone who is in need of a good book to read, but to be prepared and have your thinking cap on.

Rating:
Summary: A Touching Family Novel
Review: I read The Lazarus Child by Robert Mawson. It is a fiction novel about the strength and love of a family. I had mixed feelings about the book, but I enjoyed it for the most part.
I liked the overall story and the plot. I enjoyed the ending. I would say more about why, but that would give it away. All of the characters were well developed and I think the author wrote them all well.
There were only two things that I didn't like about this book. One of them was that the author goes overboard with the descriptions. He went into such detail in some places that I skipped ahead to the next paragraph. The other thing that I didn't like about the book was that it jumped around. Within a chapter the plot would move from Frankie's hospital room to Dr. Elizabeth Chase's childhood, and then to Jack's office. It was hard for me to keep up with the plot and what had happened in the previous chapter. It was especially hard if I put the book down for more than a day. It would have been a lot easier to keep up if I had the time and the patience to sit down and read the book in one sitting.
Despite the two low points of the book I would have to say that the overall story and the concept of the book outweighed the low points. I would also have to say that I would recommend this book to anyone who is in need of a good book to read, but to be prepared and have your thinking cap on.

Rating:
Summary: a great escape
Review: If you're willing to suspend your disbelief for most of this novel, sit back, relax, and marvel at the wonderful imagination of Mr.Mawson you'll enjoy this book. I found it fascinating, exciting, and a wonderful escape from my own life here with four healthy children. Mr.Mawson takes the reader into the unknown world of the coma victim as various interesting characters attempt to bring an innocent child back to the conscious world. There are plot twists and enough surprises to keep one guessing.

Rating:
Summary: Okay
Review: The story's premise is fascinating, and for that reason I saw it through to the end. But I found the characters a bit too stock, the research into consciousness non-existent (for example, the author routinely confuses unconsciousness and dissociation), the editing and structure sloppy and choppy, and, as someone else pointed out, the ending wholly unsatisfying. As for the dream sequences, the author would have been advised to leave that kind of thing to Stephen King and to not jump back and forth between the dream world and the conscious world. It also would have been a much stronger book had the author maintained a single point of reference with just one character.

One highlight of the story was the grandmother. Her character was another reason I stayed with the story. In the hands of a skilled scriptwriter, the story could be transformed nicely for the screen and I vote for Dame Judi Dench as the grandmonther.

Rating:
Summary: Great potential, but short on both substance & style
Review: The story's premise is fascinating, and for that reason I saw it through to the end. But I found the characters a bit too stock, the research into consciousness non-existent (for example, the author routinely confuses unconsciousness and dissociation), the editing and structure sloppy and choppy, and, as someone else pointed out, the ending wholly unsatisfying. As for the dream sequences, the author would have been advised to leave that kind of thing to Stephen King and to not jump back and forth between the dream world and the conscious world. It also would have been a much stronger book had the author maintained a single point of reference with just one character.

One highlight of the story was the grandmother. Her character was another reason I stayed with the story. In the hands of a skilled scriptwriter, the story could be transformed nicely for the screen and I vote for Dame Judi Dench as the grandmonther.

Rating:
Summary: a great escape
Review: This book had a great beginning but as it wore on, it became slow and predictable. The last few chapters we unclear and confusing to some degree. More times than necessary, some sections discussed a particular character without saying who the character was.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Live Up to Its Potential
Review: This book had the potential to be a great emotional powerhouse. Here we have the Haywood family in total disarray: young Frankie is hit by a bus, Ben is wracked with guilt and denial, the father Jack has been kicked out of the house for having an affair and his airline business is tanking, and of course the mother Alison is caught up in the middle.

This potential drama is spoiled by Mawson's subpar writing. Of particular note is Mawson's uncanny ability to skip over the most intense moments. Instead, Mawson skips ahead, then backtracks through dialogue or a couple skimpy paragraphs. The ultimate example is at the end where at the end of Chapter 17, the kid is coming out of the coma, then the story skips ahead to weeks or months later. The whole story was building towards Frankie coming out of the coma (and I'm not spoiling anything for you, fair reader, since the book is titled the LAZARUS Child), and then Mawson glosses over the climax.

You can call it inexperience of a guy writing only his second novel, or if you're less generous, you would say it's purely lousy storytelling. Either way, Mawson's poor writing takes a potential 3 or 4 star book and drags it down to 2 stars.

The plot itself is pretty average and predictable, but the characters are fairly well developed. I did find Mawson's hypothesis of a neural network being able to bring people out of comas to be interesting. However, like everything else, it was poorly executed.

I would not recommend this book, but it certainly was not awful either. I can't say how much I paid for it, but it was low enough where I have absolutely no guilt about paying to read it. My advice is to check the bargain bin of your local book store (like I did) for this and if you got cash to throw away, go ahead.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Live Up to Its Potential
Review: This book had the potential to be a great emotional powerhouse. Here we have the Haywood family in total disarray: young Frankie is hit by a bus, Ben is wracked with guilt and denial, the father Jack has been kicked out of the house for having an affair and his airline business is tanking, and of course the mother Alison is caught up in the middle.

This potential drama is spoiled by Mawson's subpar writing. Of particular note is Mawson's uncanny ability to skip over the most intense moments. Instead, Mawson skips ahead, then backtracks through dialogue or a couple skimpy paragraphs. The ultimate example is at the end where at the end of Chapter 17, the kid is coming out of the coma, then the story skips ahead to weeks or months later. The whole story was building towards Frankie coming out of the coma (and I'm not spoiling anything for you, fair reader, since the book is titled the LAZARUS Child), and then Mawson glosses over the climax.

You can call it inexperience of a guy writing only his second novel, or if you're less generous, you would say it's purely lousy storytelling. Either way, Mawson's poor writing takes a potential 3 or 4 star book and drags it down to 2 stars.

The plot itself is pretty average and predictable, but the characters are fairly well developed. I did find Mawson's hypothesis of a neural network being able to bring people out of comas to be interesting. However, like everything else, it was poorly executed.

I would not recommend this book, but it certainly was not awful either. I can't say how much I paid for it, but it was low enough where I have absolutely no guilt about paying to read it. My advice is to check the bargain bin of your local book store (like I did) for this and if you got cash to throw away, go ahead.

Rating:
Summary: It was ok until the end.
Review: This book was soooo unrealistic. The only thing I enjoyed about it was "Lizzie" and Janet Catchpole". The story seemed to focus more on Ben and not enough on Frankie. The chapters of Ben's dreams were terrible. The only reason I finished the book was to see the outcome of Frankie. I was so disappointed that there was not much said about Frankie or Lizzie in the end.