The Coma
Written by Alex Garland

First published in 2004
200 pages

I first read Alex Garland’s The Beach while recovering from jetlag in my father’s house in Melbourne. It is one of those books that you devour cover-to-cover, and then proceed to recommend to all your friends while seeking out any other books by the author in the hope that it was not some sort of literary fluke. Garland’s second book, The Tesseract, was also out at the time, and is also very good, although very different from his first. While I have debated in the past as to which is the better book with a couple of my friends, I feel it is safe to say that they both are engaging and provocative books, and if you have not read them, I strongly recommend that you do.

But it is Garland’s third book, The Coma, which I will be reviewing today, and it is a book that is not without controversy. Even before it was released, comments were made about the length of the book, which is exactly 200 pages, but reads considerably less. One of the reasons for this is the inclusion of illustrations throughout the book from Alex’s father, Nicholas Garland, who is a cartoonist by trade. Apart from the illustrations, the book clearly is quite light; the text is fairly large, and the chapters are often very short. Although 200 pages in total, I was able to read the whole book in less than an hour, and it seemed clear from the style of writing that it is supposed to be read quite quickly.

The book is mostly told in the first person, where the protagonist, who has been beaten up and lies in a coma, quickly moves from one scene to the next, trying to establish whether he is awake, or dreaming while still in his coma. Descriptions are sometimes sparse, sometimes detailed as the protagonist moves through the memories he has left, eager to find some sort of trigger from his past that will enable him to wake from the coma. The writing style helps to enhance the surreal, dreamlike nature of his memories, and also to guide the reader from one focus point to the next.

Even though I really enjoyed the book, I can’t help but feel that it isn’t great value. I borrowed my copy from the library, so was not out of pocket but if I hadn’t, I could see myself feeling slightly short changed. The truth is, this is really more of an extended short story than a novel, possibly a novella at best. While it is definitely high quality, it could possibly have benefited from including a couple of short stories with it to represent better value for the reader.

Despite this, the story itself is sound, and worth reading. While short, The Coma is well written and thought provoking, and once again leaves the reader longing for more from Garland, the mark of an excellent storyteller. We can only hope that his rumoured writing block passes, and instead of doing more screen plays for movies like Halo he manages to produce another novel with the class of The Tesseract or The Beach. While The Coma shows that Garland has not lost any of his skill when it comes to providing clear, vivid imagery, it does not answer the question of whether he has another classic novel still in him. We can only hope that he does, and that he won’t make us wait for it for too long.

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