The Coma <BRby Alex Garland
Read by Matthew Macfadyen Running time 2 hours, unabridged
Penguin £12.99 on 2 CDs
Late one night, on his way home from work, a young man called Carl is attacked while trying to defend a woman on a tube train. When he comes back to some form of consciousness, he is lying in a hospital bed, recovering from his injuries.
But Carl's experiences of the life he returns to are fragmented and confusing. Gradually, he comes to realise the new world he has entered is the land of his coma.
As he narrates his thoughts and dreams, Carl takes a matter-of-fact approach to his situation, throwing up questions about the very nature of what it means to be alive. If you lose your arms, you're still the same person. But take away consciousness, despite the full complement of arms and legs, and the person is gone.
Matthew Macfadyen is not the best of readers; he sometimes loses the listener with the monotony of his voice but he does convey a sense of who Carl is, while blurring the lines of imagination and reality, giving the story a hallucinatory feel.
