THE LAZARUS CHILD by Robert Mawson, Bantam Press, $195 WHAT on earth makes a book worth GBP2.5 million (about HK$31 million)? That was what publishers decided The Lazarus Child was worth after furious bidding at the world's biggest book fair in Frankfurt, Germany, last October, just two weeks after unknown author Robert Mawson handed in the manuscript.
It is a question that bugs you through every one of the 346 pages of the tale of estranged English couple Alison and Jack Heywood's battle to cope when their two children are involved in a road accident.
Hardly the jolliest of subjects, so maybe the publishers deemed it worthy and deep. But it is far too simplistic for that.
Yes, there are Themes Of Our Time here: whose responsibility is it to manage the ethics of the latest breakthrough in medical technology? Mawson tosses in every possible permutation. Even the defence department makes a shadowy entrance.
And The Lazarus Child is certainly, as Mawson modestly hoped, a page turner. It should be: he is pretty shameless about pulling heartstrings.
By chapter four, two children are dead and another two are hanging on by a thread. Maybe you have to be a parent - a pathetic wreck when a Little One is in danger - to really empathise, but it is a riveting read to the end.