Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Book fails to raise plot, characters from the dead., 27 May 1999
By A Customer
While my tears flowed in several places throughout Souls Raised from the Dead, I found myself dry-eyed and skeptical at the end. Betts' novel of a girl on the cusp of adolescence diagnosed with kidney disease and surrounded by a myriad of colorful adult figures could have been so much more than the plot-driven surface treatment she gave the characters. Mary Grace Thompson suffers from kidney failure, but Betts never tells the reader what that involves. Only as the reader turns the pages do the stages of dietary restrictions, dialysis, increased medications, and hope for a donor become clear as the next steps. Betts' implied medical horror is only a shadow compared to the black and white truth of medical reality. I would have been happier knowing the clinical details; however, the in's and out's of kidney failure were not the focus of this book. And therein lies my biggest disappointment with Souls Raised from the Dead. The book's focus was the cliched characters and their relationships--stoic father and prickly, loving, daughter; selfish irresponsible ex-wife and two current girl-friends with different needs and wants; self-righteous grandparents and "white trash" grandparents who have a good heart where Mary is concerned. Betts did not delve into their personalities enough to make me emphathize with them. The dialogue was stilted, though some of the one-sentence descriptions were poigniant. Betts describes Mary Thompson's thoughts through the stages of her illness with clarity, though Betts never shows how Mary's feelings of isolation, denial and detachedness affect her relationships with her father or grandparents. Betts also delved into the character of Tacey Thompson, Mary's paternal grandmother, and her struggle with a faith contradicted by reality. Initially, I was prepared for a wrenching story, but by the end of the book, I was annoyed with the predictable plot and could easily visualize this as a made-for-TV movie.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The death of a child, 1 Nov 1998
By A Customer
Doris Bett's 1994 novel Souls Raised from the Dead is a heartbreakingly sad book. Mary Thompson, age thirteen, lives with her divorced father, both of them having been left by Mary's petty, selfish, but very beautiful mother. Mary develops chronic kidney failure, and her slow demise is wrenching to both the book's characters and this reader. One realizes just how precious children are, and just how unfair life can be (or, to this lucky reader, how fortunate he and his family have been). As I read this novel in the evenings, I found myself going to check on my sleeping daughters, to make sure they were breathing soundly and snug under their covers. The true villain in this book is Mary's mother, who conceivably could have donated a kidney (Mary's father has only one sound kidney), but is too wrapped up in herself and astoundingly selfish to even see the need, let alone its urgency. Despite its highly emotional theme, Betts is not a sentimental writer. I appreciate this. She simply tells her story, and trusts its strength to hold and move the reader. This novel may hit too close to home for some parents; I do recommend it for adolescent readers.
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