This fiction by the New York native involves a precocious boy with a mysterious illness who has survived four or five cardiac arrests by the time he is seven. An Indian doctor insets a pacemaker to save him but also diagnoses progressive fatal multi-system atrophy or Tay-Sachs disease. The very insecure religious mother takes him along with the doctor to Assisi to seek a miracle cure, and later to L.A. to find his missing musician father.
There is some very sloppy proof reading in that the real paediatric genetic Tay Sachs syndrome is equated to also true but completely separate Muli-System Dysfunction Syndrome and the prevalence is said to be rare or nonexistent in children- true for the latter but not the former. The three travellers clear a metal detector at Rome’s international airport on their planned return before visiting the Trevi Fountain where Colm once more has a prolonged episode of asystole but then miraculously recovers.
He longs to meet his deadbeat father but has a final asystolic episode after travelling to L.A. and just after finally realizing that he doesn’t need to or want to.
This is a very superficial silly plot with a seven year old expressing deep existential insights and unrealistic profound emotions, realizing that he is about to die. In the “Story behind the story” the author reveals that she has had several cardiac arrests as part of a mysterious illness but that does not excuse her muddled writing and the title is a simple lie. The neurosurgeon’s Alexander Eben’s later 2013 book with the same title must be better, and I am anxious to read it. I cannot recommend this one.
1.5
The Passionate Reader 