Customer Reviews

Saving Elijah

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4 star:		(2)
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How can a book both break your heart and lift your soul? It seems odd to say that you wish a book would never end when that book has taken you on the raw, stomach-turning roller coaster ride of one family's intensely personal experience with a child's devastating illness. But when you reach the final pages of "Saving Elijah," you feel as though author Fran Dorf has essentially enveloped you in a life-affirming hug, saving you as well. As Elijah's mother, Dinah is a remarkable character, strong-willed, loving, and incredibly fearless in meeting her terrifying personal demons head on. Her relationships with her husband, daughter, and, of course, Elijah, are portrayed so thoroughly and honestly, that you can't help but care for each one and root for them to find a peaceful, hopeful resolution -- you are not disappointed. Read this book if you've ever lost anyone who was a part of you. You will step off of this wildly dizzying ride shaken and exhausted, but, in the end, renewed.

The ways of God seems mysterious especially when a child is ill. Psychologist Dinah Galligan can only wonder why her five-year old son Elijah has suffered so much from physical and developmental problems. Now the lad lies in a coma in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

However, the strangest twist of all comes when Dinah meets the ghost of her former lover Seth Lucien haunting the hospital's corridors. Soon Seth confronts Dinah wherever she is, forcing the despondent mother to face truths better buried in her subconscious. As Dinah begins to lose her grip on reality, her two older children and her spouse flee from her. Ultimately believing that Seth is real and not her imagination, Dinah strikes a bargain with the ghost: her body for her son. Elijah soon awakens from his coma with new abilities that appear supernatural.

SAVING ELIJAH is a taut psychological thriller that centers on a mother willing to sell her soul to save her child. The story line is exciting, intense, and yet often humorous as the reader wonders whether Dinah is losing her mind or actually consenting to a Faustian pact. Dinah and Elijah are intrepid charcaters and Seth (real or not) seems so devilishly tempting. The remaining family members cannot hide their exasperation or frustrations, rounding out a fabulous tale that should make Fran Dorf a household name.

Harriet Klausner

There's a depth and complexity to this electrifying tale that is extraordinary. Superficial stories about the death of a child are such a common clichéd surefire staple of movie-of-the week tear-jerkers that it is both remarkable and stunning to see someone explore loss on such deeper levels of sensitivity and insight. By the time you finish this work, you'll feel like you've been on an exhilarating journey-- it is that rare that you read something that makes you look at things in ways you didn't anticipate and go in directions you didn't expect to take. It is true that Elie Wiesel said that today literature is exhausted. That's why when you come across something so peerless and energizing as Saving Elijah, it is not just rare--it is an event.

In a compelling bit of story-telling, the book starts out exploring how the impending loss of a child strikes the protagonist Dinah Rosenberg Galligan in every core of her existence, and not just by the obvious overwhelming grief and sadness, as she flails about drowning in helplessness. Bit by bit, in fits and starts, it begins to wreck her marriage, her career, her friendships. For example, it's unusual that a book investigates how a child's illness can bring together and then push apart a husband and wife. It does this with such a beautifully raw honesty, you almost feel like you should look away, but you can't. That's what is so remarkable about this book; it keeps looking at things from angles you're not assuming. Still, it moves even beyond this onto a spiritual plane.

One of the things I liked about the book was that it was exquisitely written by the prose stylist Fran Dorf with a rhythm and cadence all its own, alternatively slowing down and then speeding up, but always building and building. The plot concerns the Faustian bargain Dinah makes with a demon from out of her past. He will intercede with death on behalf of her son if she will give herself to him. The fact that she agrees tells you more than you ever need to know about a mother's love and courage for her child. But don't for a minute think that this is a supernatural tale on the level of a Stephen King book or even those incredible otherworldly/sexual yarns of Isaac Bashevis Singer. More important than this actual demon, Dinah must boldly confront and take on the "ghosts" of her past which have long haunted her and weighed her down. Notably, this is not a depressing or pessimistic work. Saving Elijah is an optimistic meditation on the doggedness of the human spirit. It is ultimately a towering book about redemption and hope.

A thoroughly, enjoyable, can't-put-down kind of book. This story is so very different than anything I've ever read. The basic undertone of this story is a mother's love for her child. Elijah is deathly ill and knocking at death's door when his mother, Dinah, makes a "deal" with a ghost to save her son. This ghost is actually a demon and makes life difficult for Dinah, even unbearable at times. There are a lot of deep lessons in this book, and most of them are the type that none of us like to face; like the acceptance of the eventual death of a young son. Dinah fights that event and never has peace until she does accept that her son is not going to live a long, beneficial, and normally healthy life. The trauma of a fatal illness and the way it effects a marriage is another scene played out in this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone. This is definitely a page turner and one of the best books I've read.

This is a very different kind of story. I truely think it would be a great movie because of the story angles and because it is very unique and imaginative. Excellent!!

I loved Saving Elijah so much I am disappointed to have finished it. Both the writing and the story are seductive...it's an evocative, terrifying, beautiful story with a fantastic faustian twist. A ghost story featuring a wisecracking demon, but the deeper theme is about "everyday" demons - our relationships...(hint - the main character's mother is scarier than the ghost!) Ultimately, it's a beautiful and absorbing meditation on the nature of love, grief, and faith. It think it's better than The Deep End of the Ocean. Of Fran Dorf's 3 books, this is the best-written and most gripping. You'll tear through it.

Saving Elijah by Fran Dorf is the story of a mother whose five year old son sinks into a coma. At least on the surface anyway. With a basic story premise like that, I was afraid I was about to embark on a journey where I ended up reading a Lifetime movie melodrama in which a poor mother watches her life fall apart as her child struggles to resurrect himself from a deathlike sleep. Instead, what Dorf has done is write a psychological thriller in the purest sense of the term.

Let me explain. I've read so-called psychological thrillers which were not the least bit thrilling and whatever psychological relevance the story contained must have been implied in the contextual psychosis (or even psychoses) of the author. Without the thrill or context, I ended up feeling cheated by the promise of both.

But in Saving Elijah Dorf has taken a potentially melodramatic (ergo tedious) idea and infused it with something so interesting that the pain of the experience is forced upon the reader with a relentlessness that is undeniable. When the protagonist, Dinah Rosenberg Galligan, watches the way people avoid looking at her son, Elijah, lying in the coma, the reader understands that urge to look away, to not see something so frightening. I literally sighed tears when Dinah's friend Becky visits the hospital and places a long and tender kiss on the comatose child's forehead, aware of the deep compassion such an insignificant gesture suggests.

This is only one layer of the story. Dinah is being haunted by a spirit, an angel or a demon or a ghost. The reader isn't told clearly and just when you think you know you realize how very wrong you are. Dorf does a brilliant job of shifting the story to meet and yet surprise expectations. Her use of flashbacks is beyond perfection. I don't know that I've ever read an author whose ability to move in and out of past and present is so masterful. Okay. Perhaps I exaggerate but it's been a long time.

The characters are, for the most part, well developed and realized. My favorites are possibly Ellen Shoenfeld and Dinah. There is something so familiarly tragic about the choices she makes throughout her life. Don't expect any easy answers. The book begins asking the hard questions about God and the purpose of evil. You know, the questions about which a myriad of books have been and have yet to be written and will never fully realize nor resolve the issues.

And that's okay.

Saving Elijah captivated me from the prologue. Dorf's transitions between present and past events are seamless. The tension builds gradually and the suspense holds the reader. Dorf offers a unique and insightful twist on the concept of what lengths a mother would go to to save her child. Through the voice of Dinah, the mother, Dorf explores ideas of theology, anticipatory grief, futile care, and the way our past shapes us and attempts to dictate our future. She avoids the easy cliches and offers a thought-provoking look into the complex relationship between mother and ill child.

This is a very different take on the idea of just how far a mother would go to save her child from a certain death. Just what would you be willing to do? Would you "sell your soul" so to speak? Dinah is a woman who seems to have everything going for her, everything that is except a healthy child. During an endless hospital stay with her son she is "visited" by a ghost who claims to be the spirit of a long forgotten lover. The ghost taunts and teases forcing Dinah to revisit her past and cast doubt on her future. The ghost makes the ultimate offer, possession of Dinah for the saving of Elijah. This is a heart wrenching yet oddly funny tale about love, devotion, forgiveness and acceptance. It's well worth your time to read.