Liz Jensen

In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before? And what can love mean in 'interesting times'? A haunting story of human passion and burning faith set against an adventure of tectonic proportions, The Rapture is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind's self-destruction in a world on the brink.

In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Liz Jensen is the author of Egg Dancing (longlisted for the Orange Prize), Ark Baby (shortlisted for the guardian Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize).

Liz Jensen's taut psychological thriller is read by Andrew Sachs and Ben Tibber 'Remarkable suspense...mysterious and wrenching' - Anthony Minghella. I'm not most kids. I'm Louis Drax. Stuff happens to me that shouldn't happen, like going on a picnic where you drown...Nine-year-old Louis Drax is a problem child: bright, precocious, deceitful and disturbingly accident prone. When he falls off a cliff into a ravine, the accident seems almost predestined. The boy miraculously survives - but the family has been shattered. Louis' father has vanished, his mother is paralysed by shock, and Louis lies in a coma from which he may never emerge. In a clinic in Provence, Dr Pascal Dannachet tries to coax Louis back to consciousness. But the case defies medical logic, startling the doctor out of his safe preconceptions, and drawing him inexorably into the dark heart of Louis' buried world. Only Louis holds the key to the mystery surrounding his fall - and he can't communicate. Or can he? Read by Andrew Sachs (Manuel, 'Fawlty Towers') and Ben Tibber (lead, 'I Am David'), this is an intriguing, shocking, poignant and heartbreaking story about what the human heart can inflict and the mind endure. Starred Review. Louis Drax isn't like other children. The morbidly imaginative and sharply intuitive boy from a provincial city in France has survived eight suspicious accidents, one for each year of his life. On his ninth birthday, Louis suffers a mysterious fall from a cliff and ends up in Dr. Pascal Dannachet's experimental coma clinic, where the truth of his most recent mishap will be revealed. So begins British novelist Jensen's fourth book (War Crimes for the Home, etc.), a fiercely intelligent psychological thriller told from the alternating perspectives of the comatose Louis and the professionally conflicted Dr. Dannachet. As the French police search for Pierre Drax, the prime suspect in his son's fall, Louis negotiates the unconscious world with Gustave, his grotesque, bandaged imaginary companion, and Dr. Dannachet reluctantly falls in love with Louis's mother, Natalie. Behind the many twists and turns that ensue is a multilayered, genuinely convincing emotional drama that adds substance to the suspense. Families are torn apart, scientists are confounded by the miraculous, and the human heart

Ein siebenjahriges Madchen totet seine Gromutter auf brutale Weise. Ein tragischer Einzelfall, sagen die Experten. Doch sie tauschen sich. Uberall auf der Welt kommt es zu grausamen Gewalttaten, die Kinder gegen ihre Familien veruben. Nur der Anthropologe Hesketh Lock erkennt einen Zusammenhang mit einer Reihe von ganz anderen Verbrechen, die sich zur gleichen Zeit ereignen. Kann er die nahende Katastrophe abwenden?

Nine-year-old Louis Drax is a problem child: bright, precocious, deceitful, and dangerously, disturbingly, accident prone. When he falls off a cliff into a ravine, the accident seems almost predestined. Louis miraculously survives - but the family has been shattered. Louis' father has vanished, his mother is paralysed by shock, and Louis lies in a deep coma from which he may never emerge. In a clinic in Provence, Dr Pascal Dannachet tries to coax Louis back to consciousness. But the boy defies medical logic, startling Dannachet out of his safe preconceptions, and drawing him inexorably into the dark heart of Louis' buried world. Only Louis holds the key to the mystery surrounding his fall - and he can't communicate. Or can he?

"Una de les millors escriptores contemporànies, a estones surreal, a estones realista, sempre plena d'una profunda comprensió humana" Mail on Sunday . Text de contraportada Liz Jensen és autora d'exitoses novel·les com The paper eater o Ark Baby (candidata a The Guardian Fiction Prize) i, més recentment, War Crimes for the Home. Actualment viu a Londres. "Tothom deia que un dia o un altre tindria un gran accident, un accident que acabaria amb tots els altres. Potser un dia miraries amunt i veuries un nen caient del cel. Seria jo."En Louis Drax té nou anys i és un nen problemàtic: brillant, precoç, mentider i amb una perillosa i pertorbadora propensió als accidents. El dia que cau des d'un precipici l'accident sembla gairebé predestinat. El noi sobreviu miraculosament, però la seva família s'ha esmicolat: el seu pare ha desaparegut, la seva mare està paralitzada pel xoc i el Louis està en un coma que sembla irreversible. Ell és l'únic que té la clau del misteri de la seva caiguda, i no es pot comunicar. O potser sí?Alternant els pensaments del nen en coma i l'enamorament que a poc a poc sorgeix entre la seva mare i el metge que lluita per intentar fer-lo tornar en sí, Liz Jensen construeix una original i llegidora novel·la sobre el dolor, la família i la infantesa. Trasbalsadora, punyent i commovedora, La novena vida de Louis Drax no deixarà ningú indiferent.

Se diría que Gloria Taylor, una octogenariabritánicaingresada en una residencia de ancianos y cuyamemoriaflaquea por momentos, dista de ser el personaje ideal para recrear un periodo y un espacio –la Segunda Guerra Mundial en Gran Bretaña– aparentementebienconocidos, casi familiares de tan visitados por el cine y la literatura. Sin embargo, es suvozdesabrida la que narra esta historia: susrecuerdos, fragmentarios e interesados, desgranan una biografiacargada de oscurossecretos y de un dolor disimuladotras una mascara de humor feroz.Presionada por suhijo, deslenguada y vital –amante de los chistes de todos los colores (en especial de los negrosnegrisimos y los verdes), de la comida y del sexo–, Gloria recuerdadesde las ruinas de supresente los tiempos de guerra: el miedo, los bombardeos, el racionamiento, los apagones y las penurias, perotambien el descubrimiento del amor y el sexo. Relaciones fugaces e intensas, abrumadas por el sentimiento de culpa y por la cercania nada metaforica de la muerte, con pulcrossoldadosestadounidenses; unas relaciones que Gloria vive en una especie de carpe diem desquiciado. Pero por fugaces que fuerantuvieronconsecuencias atroces en su vida.

Louis Drax acaba de cumplir nueve años y lo celebra en una excursión con sus padres, enzarzados en una conflictiva separación. Es un niño peculiar: difícil, precoz y propenso a los accidentes. Durante el picnic familiar cae por un barranco a unas aguas turbulentas y le dan por muerto. Sin embargo, a las pocas horas de que certifiquen su defunción, recobras las constancias vitales y entra en coma profundo. Por si fuera poco, el padre desaparece durante el 'suceso' y la madre, Natalie, único testigo, afirma que él ha empujado a la criatura por el precipicio.

A spellbinding tale about what the human heart can inflict and the mind endure Nine-year-old Louis Drax is a problem child: bright, precocious, deceitful, and dangerously, disturbingly, accident prone. When he falls off a cliff into a ravine, the accident seems almost predestined. Louis miraculously survives - but the family has been shattered. Louis' father has vanished, his mother is paralysed by shock, and Louis lies in a deep coma from which he may never emerge. In a clinic in Provence, Dr Pascal Dannachet tries to coax Louis back to consciousness. But the boy defies medical logic, startling Dannachet out of his safe preconceptions, and drawing him inexorably into the dark heart of Louis' buried world. Only Louis holds the key to the mystery surrounding his fall - and he can't communicate. Or can he?

Desconocida hasta ahora para el lector español, Liz Jensen ocupa ya un lugar preeminente en la nómina de novelistas británicos que desde antiguo han recurrido con lucidez a la ironía y la sátira. En la estela de Swift y Orwell, Jensen recrea en esta mordaz y ambiciosa fabula futurista un mundo feliz, Atlantica, en el que introduce la sospecha apenas velada de que, si los sueños de la razon producen monstruos, los del mercado produciran sociedades de pesadilla. La isla artificial de Atlantica, un prodigio de la ingenieria en medio del oceano, ha prosperado sirviendo de vertedero de todo el planeta. Rica y envidiada, la isla esta aun paso de la utopia. O al menos esa idea quiere vender la Corporacion La Libertad, la organizacion que la administra como si fuera un hipermercado con cinco millones de clientes. Porque, en Atlantica, la mercadotecnia ha reemplazado a la politica, y a los ciudadanos se les considera... clientes. Pero algo huele a podrido en este paraiso del consumo, y ni siquiera el intensivo tratamiento de aromaterapia programado por La Libertad puede enmascarar el hedor. Harvey Kidd, el narrador, un producto defectuoso de la sociedad, se convertira en el chivo expiatorio de todos los males de la isla. Encarcelado en un barco-prision, este huerfano que se inventa su propia familia, defraudador compulsivo, donnadie vocacional, antiheroe en todos los sentidos, se pasa las horas confeccionando figuras con papel mache que masca el mismo y preguntandose que ha hecho para merecer tan aciaga suerte...