When Carl awakens from a coma after being attacked on a subway train, life around him feels unfamiliar, even strange. He arrives at his best friend's house without remembering how he got there; he seems to be having an affair with his secretary, which is pleasant but surprising. He starts to notice distortions in his experience, strange leaps in his perception of time. Is he truly reacting with the outside world, he wonders, or might he be terribly mistaken? So begins a dark psychological drama that raises questions about the the human psyche, dream versus reality, and the boundaries of consciousness. As Carl grapples with his predicament, Alex Garland - author of The Beach and the screenplay for 28 Days Later, plays with conventions and questions our assumptions about the way we exist in the world, even as it draws us into the unsettling and haunting book about a lost suitcase and a forgotten identity.
“Evocative… unsettling.” –The San Francisco Chronicle
“A strange, compelling ride into that realm where nothing is what it seems—and where night never really wakes up.” –The Times (London)
“Mind-bending… If you’re the kind of reader who likes perusing ten pages of a book before bed, be warned. Once you start this novel is it impossible to stop reading.” –The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Might just be the most perfectly paces novel since Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam.” –The St. Petersburg Times
“Unputdownable… A dark and sometimes terrifying story that derives its somber beauty from the directness and precision of Garland’s writing.” –Salon.com
“Spare in its scope and piercing in its focus on subconscious metaphysics. Garland constructs a literal mind game. The Coma repeatedly pulls the rug out from under the reader, yet somehow maintains a coherent image of Carl’s mental state.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Urgent and unsettling… compelling and chilling.” –The Observer
