This is a very unusual book and I am surprised that it was ever published to be quite frank.

The notes on the dust cover of the book tells us that the story is a dark psychological drama that raises profound questions about the boundary between the real and the imagined.

I am sure that some people may feel that it tests the boundaries between the real and the imaginery but it only does so at the very beginning. As the story begins we are certain that we are dealing with reality. Then there is an unfortunate incident in which the central character is the victim of a brutal physical attack.

For a while there is the possibility that we are being treated to real events but quite quickly we realise that reality and the imaginery are one and the same thing. The poor man is trapped in a body that seems sentient but that cannot repsond in a physical and meaningful way to anything that those around him are trying to convey and to understand.

I suppose the best I can say is that Garland has tried to write about what happens when someone is in a dream state. If that's the point of the story than it's just about passably good.

Fortunately, this is a short book and the forty page sized woodcuts and the large number of blank pages help to break up the monotony of rather a barren story.

My advice to Garland and his publisher in case there may be a next time is to keep this short: along the lines of Evelyn Waugh's Mr Loveday's little Outing. It's many years since I read Waugh's excellent short story but it's always stuck with me as a benchmark of its type!

If you like dark and mysterious stories, buy or borrow The Coma. If you don't, forget it. Sorry!

 

© Duncan Williamson
6 January 2005

© Webmaster Duncan Williamson 2005