ON HIS way home Carl sees a young woman being hassled by a group of young men. Intervening, he finds himself the focus of the gang's aggression, and is brutally assaulted.
With the numbness that generally follows extreme trauma, Carl gradually absorbs the idea that he has lost consciousness, been treated, bandaged up, and sent home. But something isn't right. Taxi drivers seem to know too much about him, but his girlfriend doesn't seem to know what he does for a living. Nor does he.
It occurs to him that he is trapped in a coma, and he finds himself wondering how to wake up. This is not the most original plotline but Garland handles it with restrained poise: the story unfolds with a kind of Hitchcockian claustrophobia, where only the most telling details intrude. But if the story clips along efficiently, it hasn't got far when it ends. This isn't so much a complaint about the shortness of the book - though £10 is quite a bit for such a slim, if elegant, volume.
It's more that it doesn't do much more than set a mood.
The Coma by Alex Garland is published by Faber & Faber, priced £9.99.
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