Present Out Of Books The Coma
| Title | : | The Coma |
| Author | : | Alex Garland |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 192 pages |
| Published | : | July 7th 2005 by Faber & Faber (first published June 17th 2004) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Mystery. Horror. Contemporary. Thriller. Fantasy. Novels |
Alex Garland
Paperback | Pages: 192 pages Rating: 3.36 | 8041 Users | 411 Reviews
Interpretation During Books The Coma
After being attacked on the Underground, Carl awakens from a coma to a life that seems strange and unfamiliar. He arrives at his friends' house without knowing how he got there. Nor do they. He seems to be having an affair with his secretary which is exciting, but unlikely. Further unsettled by leaps in logic and time, Carl wonders if he's actually reacting to the outside world, or if he's terribly mistaken. So begins a psychological adventure that stretches the boundaries of conciousness.Declare Books Supposing The Coma
| Original Title: | The Coma |
| ISBN: | 0571223109 (ISBN13: 9780571223107) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating Out Of Books The Coma
Ratings: 3.36 From 8041 Users | 411 ReviewsWrite Up Out Of Books The Coma
This is one of those dream stories where reality is vague at best. There is a sense of dread in this book that, at least in part, comes from the very fine woodcuts made by the author's father. I was wondering which came first, the woodcuts or this novel. I suspect the woodcuts. I was waiting for illumination while I read this book and it never arrived, to my disappointment. Maybe others will understand this book, I hope so.The Coma was on the bargain table at Chapters when it caught my eye. Alex Garland, I said to myself. Isn't that the guy who wrote The Beach? Yes, he is.I read The Beach long before it was made into a movie with the unspeakable Leonardo DiCaprio (which I've never seen), and I was fascinated. I recognized the society Garland creates in The Beach in so many ways, it was scary and uncomfortable and utterly fascinating. I haven't yet have the guts to read The Beach again, but it left a real
I remember reading The Coma when it first came out some 10 years-ish ago, flying through it in a day and dismissing it as eh, dream story, got it. Im glad I came back and re-read it and thought about it more afterwards as theres a lot more to it than that (and understanding what I read, rather than chalking it up as another book down, is the whole point of why I write reviews anyway). Carl is in the office making notes on papers late into the night. His secretary calls to remind him that the
A thought-provoking tale on the nature of coma, dreaming and their relation to the waking state and notions of personal identity. Very nicely written in a simple, sparse style, which, along with Garland's father's beautiful and atmospheric woodcuts, creates both tension and dreamlike disjointedness.For those who finish the book with slight bewilderment or dissatisfaction, let me just give you a clue (the same that someone was kind enough to give me): acrostic.
I should really have read this when it came out 12 years back and I was into Garland's The Beach and The Tesseract, as this is much better than either of those. Quick enough to read entirely in a book shop over lunch break (drawn in by the eerie woodcuts that illustrate it), but the spare elegance conveys quite a lot of philosophic weight to mull over. A haunting suggestion of the loneliness of any single, inescapably solitary consciousness, in any real or imagined reality, assuming the
Alex Garland is the author of The Beach, a real tour de force set on a remote island in Thailand. The Beach is an awesome debut novel, and one which I read in two sittings in two days - I could barely tear myself away from it, from beginning to end. Garland's second novel, The Tesseract, was very different - much more conceptual and experimental, and unfortunately nowhere near as successful (though the blurb states that J.G. Ballard was a big fan). The Coma is his shortest novel, and the last
Oh dear, this simply isn't very good. I'm not against dream narratives. Some good ones that I can think of are Kim Stanley Robinson's A Short Sharp Shock, Iain Banks' The Bridge and Christopher Priest's The Dream Archipelago. The Coma, however, manages to be both very brief and rather verbose. A slim volume like this one ought to be packed full of memorable snippets and fragments of description and conversation. What we have instead is a meandering non-narrative that goes nowhere and achieves
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.