All we see and all we seem, is but a dream within a dream.
Edgar Allen Poe
Time flies when you are in a coma. The problem, however, is not time, as you are trapped in this state, but the key you have to put through your own door to exit into consciousness. Some find this key within and get back to reality while some don’t and stay in their city of dreams. The Coma by Alexander Garland speaks of the latter.
The narrator, whose name may or may not be Carl, is attacked at the very start of the novel by a gang of young hoodlums whilst travelling in an underground tube. The attack was so vicious that he is taken to hospital. This much he remembers. He describes his comatose state and watches himself from the perspective of a remote viewer. He is awakened by a nurse and safely returns to his body and among the living. He goes home where he fears he will have psychosomatic breakdown due to the attack. Suddenly he finds himself outside a friend’s house and knocking at his door. Here he talks with him till dawn and with his wife in the morning before going out. This meeting is quite strange because he doesn’t remember embarking on the journey to this friend’s house and didn’t have money on him which makes it clear that he didn’t take a bus or taxi. Amidst this confusion and causal slippage, it dawns on him that he is still in a deep coma and hasn’t actually left the hospital.
What makes the novella interesting once this revelation has sunk in is Garland’s gripping description and Zen understanding of the dream world.The adventures of this interpid oneironaut into himself are quite interesting. As Carl strolls in this most lucid of dreams, he appreciates it more than waking life. He is stripped down from bones, flesh and brain to his barest identity: consciousness. And it is this consciousness that he must hold on to if he wants to step out of his brain into reality.
The narrator, whose name may or may not be Carl, is attacked at the very start of the novel by a gang of young hoodlums whilst travelling in an underground tube. The attack was so vicious that he is taken to hospital. This much he remembers. He describes his comatose state and watches himself from the perspective of a remote viewer. He is awakened by a nurse and safely returns to his body and among the living. He goes home where he fears he will have psychosomatic breakdown due to the attack. Suddenly he finds himself outside a friend’s house and knocking at his door. Here he talks with him till dawn and with his wife in the morning before going out. This meeting is quite strange because he doesn’t remember embarking on the journey to this friend’s house and didn’t have money on him which makes it clear that he didn’t take a bus or taxi. Amidst this confusion and causal slippage, it dawns on him that he is still in a deep coma and hasn’t actually left the hospital.
What makes the novella interesting once this revelation has sunk in is Garland’s gripping description and Zen understanding of the dream world.The adventures of this interpid oneironaut into himself are quite interesting. As Carl strolls in this most lucid of dreams, he appreciates it more than waking life. He is stripped down from bones, flesh and brain to his barest identity: consciousness. And it is this consciousness that he must hold on to if he wants to step out of his brain into reality.
The protagonist’s surreal dreamscape is helped by the woodcuts that accompany every fresh chapter. These woodcuts are worked by Nick Garland, Alexander’s cartoonist father and enhance the reading material.
The Coma is a very short-novel and one can finish it in an hour. Although lacking the popular-culture references of The Beach (Garland’s acclaimed debut novel), it can be let off easy. While The Beach pursued paradise, The Coma chases actuality. Hence, anyone looking for a parallel between the two works has got to be comatose.
I'm only sleeping...(cover)
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