INSIDE COVER:
Louis Drax is a boy like no other. He is brilliant and strange, and every year something violent seems to happen to him. He has always managed to survive--to land on his feet, like a cat. But cats have only nine lives, and Louis has used up eight, one for every year. On his ninth birthday, Louis goes on a picnic with his parents and falls off a cliff. The details are shrouded in mystery. Louis's mother is shell-shocked; his father has vanished. And after some confusion Louis himself, miraculously alive but in a deep coma, arrives at Dr. Pascall Dannachet's celebrated coma clinic. The Ninth Life of Louis Drax is the story of a family falling apart, told in the vivid voices of its comatose son and Dr. Dannachet as he is drawn into the Drazes' circle. Full of astonishing twists and turns, his is a masterful tale of secrets the human mind can hide.