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Coma (Paperback)

by Alex Garland (Author) "Until the telephone rang, the only sound in my office was the scratching of my pen as I made margin notes, corrections, and amendments ..." (more)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 18.50
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Tesseract A Novel

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3.5 out of 5 stars (134)  CDN$ 13.51
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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

In the latest novel by the bestselling author of the Generation X thriller The Beach, a young man who fell into a coma after being assaulted on the London Underground tries to piece his life back together. Shuttling in dreamlike fashion between his hospital bed and a hazy succession of places—his apartment, friends' houses, a record shop, a bookshop, his childhood home, a shrine—he sifts through conflicting memories of his past and unanswerable questions about his present. The novel reaches for Kafkaesque ambiguity—is the narrator awake or in a dream? did he ever come out of the coma? is there a difference between ourselves and our fantasies?—but Garland's parable feels more like an exercise than a true exploration, constricted by its sluggish pace and plodding prose ("I stood. I raised a hand. I said, 'Hey' "). Forty woodblock illustrations by the author's father, Sir Nicholas Garland, a political cartoonist and artist, are handsome but function as little more than filler. By the end of the story, with the narrator unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, he finally decides, "None of it was real. I didn't care." Chances are good the reader will feel the same way.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


From Booklist

Slight but entertaining, this Mobius strip of a novel should fuel the cult following that Garland cultivated among twentysomethings with The Beach (1996) and the screenplay for 28 Days Later, which imagined an England overrun by zombies. Like that film, this book follows a man who awakens from a coma inside a London hospital. But in this case, the dawning horrors he faces might all be inside his head. What we know, or think we know, is that the man's name is Carl. One night, on the last train home, he stands to intervene when a gang of young toughs accosts a fellow passenger. The next thing Carl knows, he is in the hospital trying to swim back to consciousness. From there, the spare, sly story takes several Kafkaesque turns, its foreboding mood heightened by the woodblock illustrations of Garland's father. We watch, admiring, as Carl dopes out his states of consciousness and logically navigates a course back toward normal. But just when the facts start coming into focus, the view blurs up again, and we cannot help but smile. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
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
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Coma
75% buy the item featured on this page:
Coma 3.0 out of 5 stars (12)
CDN$ 13.51
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CDN$ 12.78
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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (5)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most helpful customer reviews

 
1.0 out of 5 stars My First, and Probably Last, Garland Book, Dec 14 2007
By Benjamin Anderson (Fredericton, NB CAN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Bad. His writing style is very plain and boring, and the novel has literally NO substance. Don't waste your time on this. I'm glad that I only paid 1.50 or something for this. Some ideas are okay, but it comes off as a stupidly stripped down "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", without the clever mind-erase/love-story aspect, and also without the great writing (for screen, o'course).
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3.0 out of 5 stars Pass on this one, Oct 17 2007
By NorthVan Dave (North Vancouver, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   
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.
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2.0 out of 5 stars Great... and then it ends... poorly., Jul 24 2006
By Famousdog (Bradford, UK) - See all my reviews
Okay, its short - but so are many great works of literature. Garland writes so well, his atmospheric prose and original imagery really helped to hook me and he admirably wove and re-wove the strands of suspense until they had reached breaking point... The problem I had with this novel was that he then failed miserably in the last pretentious paragraph to break them. The end was meaningless disappointing drivel. We all know that Garland has been suffering from writers block - I would have preferred it if he hadn't bothered at all, rather than producing this abortive short story.
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 		 Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Why so short
I can't argue that the story was not gripping, but I read it in an hour............
Ater such a long wait since The Tesseract I expected more.
Published on Jul 7 2005 by James Briggs

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing, nightmarish and brilliant
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. Read more
Published on Jul 16 2004 by Dangle's girl

2.0 out of 5 stars Ponderous
I was a big fan of Mr. Garland's debut novel "The Beach," less so of "The Tesseract," and while I was entertained by his latest effort, I can't say it compares... Read more
Published on Jul 7 2004 by J. F Malysiak

4.0 out of 5 stars A Mad Trip Through (Un)Consciousness
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. Read more
Published on Jun 27 2004 by Sebastien Pharand

3.0 out of 5 stars Good experiment moves quickly, lags then lands well enough.
From my weird title you probably get the feel of what it is to read this book...maybe.
Alex Garland wrote one of my favourite books of all time: The Beach. Read more
Published on Jun 24 2004 by r_duke

2.0 out of 5 stars Let's go back to "The Beach"
I picked up a copy of Alex Garland's "The Coma" hoping for the same fast-paced storytelling that grabbed me in his first novel, "The Beach" with its successive uncertainty and... Read more
Published on Jun 24 2004 by K. Lin

2.0 out of 5 stars Let's go back to "The Beach"
I picked up a copy of Alex Garland's "The Coma" hoping for the same fast-paced storytelling that grabbed me in his first novel, "The Beach" with its successive uncertainty and... Read more
Published on Jun 24 2004 by K. Lin

5.0 out of 5 stars "Coma" Will Keep You Alert
If you ever get mad at yourself for not being able to remember your dreams, you will definitly relate to this book. Read more
Published on Jun 22 2004 by Taylor G.

5.0 out of 5 stars A wait most worth it
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... Read more
Published on Jun 18 2004

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