|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Until the telephone rang, the only sound in my office was the scratching of my pen as I made margin notes, corrections, and amendments. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pass on this one,
By
This review is from: Coma (Hardcover)
I picked up this book because it was written by Alex Garland and after enjoying The Beach and The Tesseract I had high hopes for this story. Unfortunately for me, I should have kept my hopes low.Without giving too much away, as you might deduce from the title of the book, the story focuses on a coma patient and all the thoughts and ideas that come with being in a coma. Im not sure what I was expecting to be honest with you, but whatever it was, this wasnt it. What I wanted was more of a story. What I got was more of an unofficial biography of the person lying in the coma. Which I suppose is what Garland was aiming for when he wrote the book. Trouble is, I was expecting a story. Only I didnt get one. So is it fair for me to dislike this book when really, it is my expectations that are out of whack with what the story actually delivered? No, probably not. But then again, life isnt fair. Sorry Alex. Better luck next time.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Disturbing, nightmarish and brilliant,
By Dangle's girl (Astoria, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Coma (Hardcover)
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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Mad Trip Through (Un)Consciousness,
By
This review is from: Coma (Hardcover)
It had been a while since Alex Garland had published a novel. After The Beach and The Tesseract, Garland worked on the amazing horror flick 28 Days Later. The Coma, a short novella that is, like everything else Garland has written, not easily classifiable. This ends up being the novel's forte and also its biggest flaw.While trying to help a woman who is being attacked on a subway, Carl is beaten to a bloody pulp and left for dead. A long while later, he wakes up from the coma the attack left him in and returns home. But he soon realizes that nothing is as it used to be. Things have changed, things are wrong, things are just unexplainable. Time seems to be moving faster, Carl finds himself moving from one place to another without remembering having done so. And how about those invisible bleeding wounds on his body? Garland weaves his narrative just like a dream. One second we're standing in one place, the next we're in a total different setting. Things are disjointed and they don't always make sense for the reader. Until, that is, something crucial is revealed to us that changes the way we see or understand the events taking place in the narrative. Told in the first person over very short chapters, with interesting visual images to guide us through the story, The Coma is a story that is both imaginary and frighteningly real. As always, Garland lets his imagination run wild to create a one-of-a-kind trip to the human psyche. Then again, the book left me craving for more. I wanted more out of Carl, wanted to learn more from the characters and the situations they were in. Over the course of two very short chapters, Garland tells us a bit about Carl's childhood, but not enough to eradicate my curiosity. Some sections could have been fleshed out a bit more. It's rare that you'll want more out of a story. These days, most book should listen to the 'less is more' rule. But The Coma is an exception to the rule. As it stands, The Coma is a very fast read that you'll probably want to read again. An original read that will leave you craving for more.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
