The Coma

love it

A man named Carl is attacked on the train while trying to defend a woman from some thugs and put into a coma for his efforts. He awakens after an unspecified amount of time and is released to find people around him behaving very strangely. He arrives at places without remembering the journey. He is surprised to find himself in bed with his secretary. All kinds of things just seem a little off. Was Carl injured more seriously than the doctors realized? Has he become amnesiac? THE COMA is a fascinating exploration into existence, reality, dreams, consciousness and identity. It is a quick read, but a thought-provoking one. Some may find it slight, but after the two bloated, overlong novels I had read just prior to this one, I found it a relief. Garland says more in two hundred liberally-spaced pages than the others did in five hundred, and says it better. Woodcut illustrations by the author's father add to its surreal quality. I can't stop thinking about it. Highly recommended.

I have read the complaints of other reviewers about this book, and while I recognize each person's right to his/her opinion, I can't help but feel they just didn't get it. Yes, the book is short. It's essentially a novella rather than a novel. However, it is short by necessity. Garland tells his tale succinctly, weaving through different states of consciousness in such a way that we can't help but wonder if we're dreaming the words on the page. Yes, the device of the story is not a new one. However, the way that the story is told is what differentiates it from others "like it". Carl is not only aware that he is dreaming much of the book, but explores the dream state and tries to use it to his advantage. I found this book fascinating. I would highly recommend it to anyone who reads for intellectual stimulation in addition to passing the time reading a good yarn. No, it's not like The Beach. But that's not a bad thing. If you want an author who keeps writing the same book over and over, there are a plethora from which to choose. This book is an exploration on the theme of consciousness through which Garland manoevres, do I dare?...like a dream.

What a bizarre, haunting little book! If you're familiar with Garland's work that description probably won't surprise you. Garland is a master of literary bizarreness. His precise and evocative language has, in the past, led him to be compared to Graham Greene; this novel, in my opinion, owes more to Kafka in its complex simplicity, sense of dread and sometimes hopelessness, and just all-around creepiness. The concept is simple: what happens, what does the mind experience, when one is in a trauma-induced coma? The answers Garland provides are chilling. In a way, the entire novel is a meditation on Descartes' age-old argument of "cogito ergo sum," but Garland is interested in that space in which *only* thought exists (not, I suspect, what Descartes had in mind). The result is downright disturbing at times, and the sense of confused reality is only heightened by the wood-carved illustrations (provided by Garland's father, a London political cartoonist) that follow each chapter. These illustrations are essential to the book's atmosphere, and I spent just as much time pondering them as I did pondering the questions about Being that the younger Gardner raised. This book will probably not find a wide audience, and will disappoint/bore/go over the heads of most book-club types. But it's a truly brilliant work, and I believe it will secure Garland a place amongst the masters.

It would be a real shame if the inept movie version of "The Beach" were to keep anyone from picking up Alex Garland's latest. "The Coma" is a real masterpiece, and like "The Tesseract" goes far beyond the budding promise of "The Beach" to show a genuine talent at work. "Coma" seems to be a straightforward tale of a man's recovery from a severe beating, but from the first eerily flat descriptions of violence through dreamscape after dreamscape, the reader is brought to increasingly disturbing place. The woodcuts add brilliantly to the atmosphere, at their most effective at their simplest: slashes of white or shadows with no faces. Garland's ability to put the reader inside another's conciousness is reminiscent of masters like Dostoevsky. Please, purge your mind of the vision of Leo DiCaprio in warpaint and get this book.

This is a wonderful, readable short novel. I won't give plot summation (you can scroll up for that), but suffice to say that this is, even though a quick read, a thoroughly engaging story and a worthy follow-up to the Tesseract. if you are hesitant of spending perhaps 20 bucks on a book you will most likely digest in one day, fret not. The story stays with you and, trust this guy, you'll be picking it up again within the month.