The Coma

On the back cover of my copy of this, Kazuo Ishiguro states that “The Coma is a bold step towards the creation of a new genre, perhaps even a new art form”, which is ridiculous even for publishers’ blurb. New art form? What this book strongly reminded me of was Philip K Dick’s science-fiction classic, Ubik, published nearly four decades earlier.
   The set-up is this: punched and kicked into unconsciousness one night (by four assailants, while trying to defend a fellow passenger on the Tube) Carl reawakens in a hospital bed. Patched up, he’s allowed to return home. But, almost immediately, a series of puzzling incidents set him wondering whether he’d been more badly injured than he’s realised—whether he has, in fact, show more even woken up at all. It soon becomes obvious enough: he hasn’t. What’s “happening” now is happening inside his own head, while in reality he’s still lying in that hospital bed sunk in a coma (this isn’t a huge spoiler; he tells us himself fairly early on, and of course there’s the book’s title). So far, so unremarkable. What he also realises, though, is that his goal should be to wake from this coma. But how? If you realise you’re living in a sort of dream-world, how do you find your way back to the real one? And that’s where it does all begin to get interesting.
   If you’re of a mind to (just as with Ubik) you can read Eastern philosophy into all this: our everyday life as the equivalent of a coma, from which we must, somehow, try to wake back to reality. The book’s many completely blank pages, its woodcut illustrations and writing style (very plain, with lots of short simple sentences) are all, I think, intended to enhance this impression. It’s a short read overall too; at no more than seventy or eighty pages of actual text, you can read, mull over, reread…and it was during my second read-through that the penny finally dropped: rereading, perhaps, is itself the key to understanding this book’s odd “ending” in particular. Interesting…
   That’s very much the kind of book The Coma is: ancient ideas, sure, dulled by overfamiliarity maybe, but here expressed in a fresh, and much more modern, way. show less

When Carl wakes up from a coma, which he slipped into after receiving the beating of a lifetime while traveling the subway, his life seems very different from his life before the coma. He experiences black-outs, and discovers strange things about himself that surprise him. As more time passes, Carl grows increasingly confused; is he really out there and awake, or is his mind playing a cruel trick on him?

The Coma takes you on a trip, exploring consciousness and how it intertwines with reality. I finished the book in one sitting. That’s rare for me. (I usually need to put a book down every once in a while and mull it over while keeping myself occupied with other chores and hobbies, and then get back to it later, more attentive.)

Then show more again, the book isn’t even 200 pages long with a large type, wide spacing between sentences and including page-sized (but suitably atmospheric) woodcut illustrations by the author‘s father Nicholas Garland - so that had something to do with it. It didn’t take long, in other words.

Nonetheless, The Coma was unputdownable; it kept me in suspense and wonder. I like being surprised, I like wondering. Oh, I got plenty of that in the form of surreal settings and dreamlike descriptions.

“What the [….]?” (insert curse word of your own preference; mine started with an ‘f’) was exclaimed a countless amount of times. My eyebrows found their way up, nearing my hairline, throughout most of the book. I reread paragraphs to make sense of it all.

Oh yes, I felt intrigued at first, but taken for a fool as I neared the ending. (Yet I kept hoping for something. After all, Alex Garland wrote “The Beach” and the screenplay for “28 Days Later”.) As much as I like being a bit of a detective as I read (which is what appeals me to reading mysteries; feeling as if I‘m actively thinking with the narrator), I also need to feel like I’m going somewhere. Alex Garland didn’t offer me that. And then I reached the end, and I felt robbed.

The experience reminded me of Michael Douglas in that movie, “The Game”. Yeah thanks for watching it was all a joke, SURPRISE, hahahahaha. Haaaaa. There’s two hours of my life that I am NEVER, EVER getting back. And The Coma, similarly, fell flat.

Even though this book was clearly more about the reading experience, exploring the dream state, The Coma was more like an indulgent writing exercise for the writer; in my opinion, it should have stayed in his drawer, or it should have been rewritten to have more substance before being published. I’m positive Garland is a fine writer, I got that from his prose in this book, but The Coma didn’t serve as the best first impression. Luckily, I purchased this book for a few euros at a book fair.

I could end this review cleverly with a, “This book was so boring, it nearly put me to sleep!” But that would be untrue. It wasn’t boring. But with an ending such as this, in hindsight I feel that I have wasted my time. Time I now think would have been better spent actually asleep, dreaming my own dreams.

Find the review and an accompanying portrait at the Reading & Reviewing blog: http://ofbooks.blogspot.com/2009/09/r-057-coma.html show less

The author is known for writing The Beach- his breakout work which will still remain the book I reccomend to others interested in his work. The Coma is an interesting read and is very short and accessible. It is simply the story of a man in a coma. To say more is to render reading the book almost unneccessary.
I bought into what Alex Garland was trying to do in the book but felt as though the exercise ultimately didn't have much of a point and actually became quite tiresome about 3/4s of the way through the book. I remained for his fluid and evocative style of writing and the amazing woodprints done by his father that are liberally sprinkled through the book.
If you're interested in the book I would borrow it from the library before show more buying it to see if it's something you wish to have forever. In my opinion; I wanted to read the book being a fan of Alex Garland's style and writing interests but wouldn't want to commit permanent shelf space to it. show less

Getting into reading Alex Garland's work. After Annihilation came out I became aware that we was / is a novelist. Not sure if he has anything forthcoming but if he does I would love to read it since, for me, The Coma was a great read. Garland takes a disjointed approach to the short novel and the effect is, as intended, dream like, surreal, and thoroughly off-kilter. His written work here is really amazing approach to creating the effect to keep the reader just out of the loop till the end / endish.

The story centers around a man who is the victim of a violent crime on the subway. From there the story goes into and out of scenes and the reader is kept guessing as to what is happening or not happening. There are scenes and sections and show more short chapters that keep things moving and are filled with imagery and descriptions that are sure to stick with you. The short novel is enhanced by really great woodcuts by Alex Garlands father and they really help to propel the story forward as well. I found myself flipping back and forth between chapters and woodcuts through the entire read.

The Coma is a suberb short read. I will be reading it again - it was so very good. show less

Coma starts off very promisingly; Carl is in a coma, and we suffer along with him all his experiences, never sure what is real and what imagined, never sure what is his real state or condition. Up to this point it is a fascinating read, and we are probably switching from one opinion to another as to what the reality is, however when we finally learn what the reality is comes as something of a let down. There is no question about the quality of the writing and how well it conveys dream like images, but its drift toward a somewhat predicable conclusion seems to be a lost opportunity, an opportunity for something really imaginative.

The Coma has a simple premise: while commuting home late one night, a man named Carl tries to protect a woman from thugs on a train and finds himself brutally assaulted. After being released from hospital he realises that something is wrong: his life is disjointed, impossible things are happening, and he seems to be hallucinating. He soon realises that he never left the hospital at all, and that he is trapped in a coma. Realising that he must be the instrument of his own salvation, he sets about exploring the dreamscape in an effort to wake up.

Clocking in at around two hundred pages (this is one of the first books I've read in ages that doesn't number its pages; I got the count off Amazon), many of which are white space of woodcut show more illustrations made by garland's father, The Coma is a quick and easy read. It had to be, of course - an exploration of one's mental landscape, with all the metaphors and weirdness required, would be far too tedious to cover a whole novel. As it stands, Garland manages the description quite well, and The Coma never feels like a chore to read - although novellas rarely do.

It does work quite well as a story, with a few glimpses of figures in Carl's hospital room making intriguing statements providing mystery, plus the simple desire to find out whether or not he successfully wakes up. There's also an unsettling sense of eerie alienation, with a few genuinely disturbing scenes; this is a book that could very easily be adapted into a horror film.

Interesting enough to hold my attention. Not worth seeking out, but certainly worth the $5 for which I bought it at Borders' holy-shit-we-are-on-the-brink-of-bankruptcy sale. show less

Alex Garland wrote The Beach and the screenplay for 28 Days Later, so I was expecting something a bit less predictable from this shortish story, illustrated with woodcuts by his father, political cartoonist Nicholas Garland. The Coma makes the reader think, but our thought-lines run in fairly obvious directions, as does Carl’s, the narrator and coma patient. It has – or could have, if Garland had let it – an interesting psychological angle, and there are moments that provoke an unsettled reaction, but as professional a writer as Garland obviously is, I can’t help feeling that the subject and event line were pulled from a list of college essay-writing options.

An easy read, not a complete waste of time, but I was left with the show more urge to smack the author about the head and point out that he’s a high calibre writer who can deliver better. show less