Reviews

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this book at ALA Midwinter 2013. All quotes are based on an uncorrected text.

By all accounts, JJ O’Malley is a somewhat unusual young man. Adopted from a Romanian orphanage by an old Irish bachelor, and taken back to County Mayo, Ireland, JJ is raised there, and grows up to show a prodigious intellect. But in some respects, JJ is too smart for his own good, and his mind seems to eat at itself, spinning endlessly through impossible questions and conjectures, occasionally driving him to unusual behaviour. So when Ireland announces its participation in the Somnos Project, a European Union penal experiment in which criminals can serve their sentences in a deep coma, JJ volunteers to serve as the control patient. The unusual experiment draws attention from around the world and overnight JJ and his fellow prisoners become celebrities almost in the manner of reality television.

JJ spends the novel in his artificially induced coma, and his story is told to us by his father, his girlfriend, a former teacher, a family friend, and his member of parliament, who was responsible for Ireland’s participation in the experiment. Their different relationships to JJ build on one another to slowly reveal different aspects of his character and his past. Each voice is distinct and carefully realized, reflecting the age, gender and class of the speaker. Coma-bound, JJ does not speak for himself, but only in their memories. In a way, the reader becomes the fascinated public of the novel, eager for more information about the celebrity, but unable to access him directly.

The voices of JJ’s family and friends are counterpointed by frequent footnotes, which are sometimes only tangentially related to the point in the story at which they are attached. The language of the footnotes diverges sharply, taking a high academic tone in contrast to the more colloquial monologues of JJ’s loved ones. Some provide supplemental information about Irish history and geography, while others philosophize about the cultural and ethical implications of the Somnos Project. At times however, the academese was so exaggerated, that I was put in mind of the Sokal Hoax. Many of these footnotes are long and sprawling, extending across as much as five pages, and making it difficult to return to the flow of the narrative. I experimented with reading each footnote as it arose, and with reading all of the footnotes at the end of a chapter, but was unable arrive at a satisfying method for getting through them.

Despite the intriguing science fiction premise, I would hesitate to classify the book as such. The Somnos Project is, in some ways, almost incidental to JJ’s story, which is quite compelling even before he becomes involved with the penal experiment. It is a story of politics, psychology, metaphysics and family that defies easy classification.

From http://shayshortt.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/notes-from-a-coma/

em_binks's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

aditurbo's review against another edition

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3.0

Notes from a Coma has a good story in its basis, which grabs and moves, but somehow gets lost on the way. The main character, JJ, is a fascinating young man, a thinking man in a world of hard-working, simple folk, who is nevertheless accepted, tolerated and loved by his adopting father and community despite his differences and quirks. He is obsessed by interesting ideas and sometimes acts upon them, even if this takes him over the edge sometimes. His relationship with his friend-brother Owen is beatifully described. You can even get over the very annoying and sometimes intelligible very long footnotes that plague the book, with no added value to the story. The author could've found a better way to enter their contents into the book. You may buy into the whole not-properly-explained decision of JJ's to enter the coma project. What you can't abide for, though, is the fact that this whole mix doesn't really come into fruition, doesn't really mean anything at the end. I'm still not sure what the author wanted us to get from all this, what was the point. Is there any hidden message about the way we are supposed to lead our lives, use our brains? If so, I don't know what it is. Is there another message or meaning? I'd love to know if anyone has gotten it. For me, it was a bit of a disappointment. I was expecting to get more out of this book.

franceswilde95's review against another edition

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4.0

The ending was a bit anticlimactic but I loved the five different narrators! And the believable building of a character whose intelligence and self-awareness was his downfall

aishie's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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