Synopses & Reviews
The author of the international bestseller
The Beach now serves us a gripping mystery and a stylistic tour de force that delves into the subconscious mind, with brilliantly disturbing results.
This mysterious and unsettling tale is illustrated by forty woodcuts created by the author's father, the political cartoonist Nicholas Garland.
Review
"[The Coma] is a novel of ideas, focused, emotionally chaste, and produced for the most part in a tone spare to the point of anality. This leads to a curious effect, a terse simplicity rather frightening in the world of padded-up books, which makes the reader want to look away, as if from some public action too transparent, too human. Wait a minute, you want to say: narrative is usually more dissembled than this; and at its best such simplicity suggests a direction all narrative might explore. At its worst, we get the sense that Garland has not only worked himself into a box, but he wants the reader in there with him." M. John Harrison, The Times Literary Supplement (read the entire Times Literary Supplement review)