The Children Act

English language

Published Jan. 24, 2014 by Jonathan Cape.

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4 stars (11 reviews)

London High Court Judge Fiona Maye presides over a sensitive case involving a family of Jehovah's Witnesses who won't allow their seventeen-year-old son to get a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Meanwhile, Fiona's husband, Jack, has just left home, and she begins to feel the pressures of both resolving the case and saving her crumbling marriage.

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A judge has to decide a difficult case about a boy just months from the age of consent who might die without a blood transfusion - something his religious beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness forbids. She makes her decision, he undergoes a kind of conversion to secularism and ... stuff happens. Beautifully written but a bit irritatingly self-absorbed in the end.

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