The Coma (Paperback)

The man (he remains unnamed throughout the novel) is released fairly quickly from the hospital and returns home. He tries, cautiously, to enter back into his life, but he begins noticing strange jumps in time and a selective amnesia. Acquaintances tell them man that they don't know something because the man doesn't know it either. Things do not add up or make sense to the man and he knows he has to return to the hospital. He is still in the coma, and these episodes are his coma dreams.

"The Coma" is a short novel, with less than 200 pages. This brevity gives rise to added tension in the story as Garland is able to build the narrative in little chunks that feel like movie scenes. We feel the jumps in the narrative, these confusing dreams as the man tries to figure out what happened to him, where he is, and how to get back to life. We feel the man's confusion in not knowing what is a coma dream and what is reality. Garland's technique is very effective.

Reading "The Coma" is trying to decipher the man's memories and take the man's journey through his unconscious. In the coma dream something is real only if the man can remember it. There is no rhyme or reason to what he remembers and why he remembers what he does, but isn't that how memory? Alex Garland takes the reader on a eerie trip through a man's unconscious and coma ridden dreams, and in the process tells a very interesting (and slightly creepy) story.

Garland is the author of the novels "The Beach" and "The Tesseract" and also wrote the screenplay for the zombie horror film "28 Days Later." His fiction is something to be anticipated and thus far it has not disappointed, though it is never what is expected.

-Joe Sherry

Therefore, my anticipation was very high when I heard of the author's new book "The Coma". What did I expect? I'm not really sure. Hopefully more of the same style as the Tesseract perhaps. What did I get? I will try and explain as best as I can.

"The Coma" is about a man, Carl, who, on trying to help a young woman out on the tube one night becomes the victim of a brutal assault by four teenagers. After that, Carl wakes up in a coma ward. Or does he? From here on I don't want to give too much away but basically the book continues to delve into the mind and surroundings of Carl. His thoughts, or real life situations, his trauma of not knowing whether his life is real or imagined and his determination to find out the truth is all explored here with both intelligence and humour.

The book itself is very short with many illustrations created by Nicholas Garland, the father of the author. The illustrations pick up on various places and images that Carl either remembers, is present at or conjures up, so they really do no damage to the flow of the book whatsoever. Although the chapters are short (some of them are less than half a page!) this makes it a comfortable read and even works in favour of the storyline as each chapter provides a glimpse at part of the real life, thoughts or memories of the central character which he himself is having trouble recollecting. This is why the book is so readable.

I would urge any Garland fan that enjoyed the Tesseract to give this book a go. You may think that by the size of the book and lack of full written pages that you have been ripped off, but I assure you that you're not. Altogether I was very impressed with the books style, flow and content and I hope that in the future Garland continues to write both intriguing and intelligent novels such as this.