Customer Reviews

COMA

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The book "Coma" by Robin Cook is about four medical students entering the freighting world of medicine. The time is February of 1976. Three of the medical students are male and one is female. During this time it was very hard for a female to succeed as a doctor. It is even harder for Dr. Susan Wheeler to succeed when she uncovers a horrifying deception. The deception she uncovers is that a select group of senior doctors at Memorial Hospital are taking patients into minor surgery and making sure they do not ever wake up. The patients are not dead; they are in a comatose state. Susan discovers they are harvesting the patients' body parts. She is out to uncover the truth even if it means risking her own life.

"Coma" is very well-written. It has a lot of great description of the characters and their surroundings. The author also gave very vivid description to the operations and procedures performed in a hospital atmosphere. Although the book was very well-written and the author did a great job of putting the reader in the scene, to read this book one must have a fair amount of learned medical terminology. The author uses a lot of very highly technical medical terms, which makes the reading very hard if one is not sure what is going on. Other than this the book is very suspenseful and great reading.

Cook's writing in this novel is mediocre, at best. Yes, his in-depth knowledge of medicine is evident, but maybe a little too evident. Case in point, when he's describing the main character, Susan Wheeler, he says of her physical appearance that she had, " . . . that American, Californian style that made eyes turn and hypothalamuses awaken." Oh, please! That description is, for lack of a better word, cheesy. Who describes someone in such medical terms? It's the kind of comment one doctor might make to another, but for the general reading public, it's just bad - laughably bad. This is only one example. There are several others where it seems the author wants to ensure the reader recognizes his abundant medical knowledge, when his energies would have been better spent focusing on character- and plot-development.
Another hurdle I couldn't overcome was his writing style. He often introduces a character, then repeatedly refers to the character by name when a simple pronoun would suffice. "To Bellows it was incomprehensible how an individual could do so much bodily damage to himself and still keep it up. Bellows did not smoke; Bellows had never smoked. It was incomprehensible to Bellows . . . " I felt like screaming, "Yes, I understand you're talking about BELLOWS!"
I know it sounds as though I'm being petty, but bad writing really bothers me, and this book seems to be chock-full of it. Maybe when I return this book to the library I'll check out another one of Cook's novels, just to give him a fair shot.

Author Robin Cook, M.D, published the spine-chilling shocker, written in only two weeks, Coma, in 1978. Cook, not always a novelist, graduated from Columbia University in 1966 and began his work at Harvard University a few years later as a medical doctor. Cook began his writing to get people's awareness dealing with current medical issues that would enlighten the public. Cook's technique involves using his knowledge of medicine and surgery to give clear and accurate descriptions throughout the medical mystery.
Coma takes place in Boston Memorial in the late 1960's. Third year medical student, Susan Wheeler, begins what she thought would be a normal hospital rotation until numerous patients who underwent normal, routine surgery but never awoke and slipped into a irreversible coma. Over a brief period, several events take place. From an unsightly eye, as well as ear-full in the hospital morgue, to endless pursuits lead by an estranged hired hit man, to an illegal institute that had other plans in mind for the comatose patients, other than care. The non-stop entities make for an excellent sci-fi novel. Susan Wheeler is on a personal mission to find an explanation as to why over twelve patients have slipped into irreparable comas after standard surgery in the abominable OR #8.
Cook organized Coma as a diary anecdote. Each new 'chapter' is headed by the date and time to give a precise account of the events that did and will take place. Cook's style of writing stays constant throughout the novel, he is very persuasive yet logical in his writing. Each major event that occurs is not so obvious as to what the outcome will be, yet once uncovered, it makes perfect sense. Coma's text is based on actual medical terminology and diagnosis, yet can be difficult for someone who has little medical knowledge to fully comprehend. Cook's multiple medical word usage was an important factor throughout the novel to understand the over gist of the plot. The various persuasive techniques used by Cook all through the book were most rewarding at the end of the thriller as the mind boggling mystery behind manually induced comatose in OR #8 is finally reveled.

There is one thing for sure; Robin Cook is definitely a doctor. Due to the nature of the novel I was more than prepared to have a fair amount of medical terminology and jargon thrown at me...at times it was a bit tedious and the explanations quite lengthy, but for the most part the subject matter kept me interested. However, I was surprised at how sterile and predictable the main characters were written. Susan Wheeler is not only brilliant, but so stunningly beautiful that every male character's inner dialogue (and yes, I do pretty much mean every male) must endlessly muse about how "dynamite" her figure must be under those sexy scrubs. In fact for a good chunk of the book, the sole purpose the character Dr. Bellows served was someone to remind us how gorgeous and virile-looking Susan is. But of course, Wheeler herself feels that her profession has actually "neutered" her sexual appeal and confidence as a woman. Right. Really, Susan was not likeable and it had nothing to do with her seeming perfection. Her sense of entitlement is cloying, and she seemed unable to comprehend that you don't throw attitude towards your superiors on your FIRST DAY OF ROTATION. She simply was not human enough to sympathize with, which is a shame, because there were several instances which I did agree with the gist of her feelings regarding the unfair ways women are treated in the workplace.

Aside from the characters, the actual dialogue of the entire book is far too technical. And when I say technical, I don't mean in terms of medical terminology, because I said before, that was to be expected. But for example, one part of the book was describing you guessed it, Bellows attraction to Susan. It went something like, "Bellows felt his hypothalamus react to the smooth flesh of Susan's bosom". Uh, okay. And don't get me started on a scene where a med student faints while scrubbed in during an operation. Let's just say, Cook wrote more about the med student's physiological happenings while about to faint, rather than giving this med student an actual PERSONALITY.

Despite it's shortcomings, this book did keep me in suspense, and I said before the subject matter is inherently interesting. Although I have to say that finishing the book felt more like completing a required reading assignment rather than a leisurely entertainment. Oh well. This is Cook's first novel, and I can say that with his later writings he did in fact find a balance between writing suspenseful novels and giving miniature dissertations on the reactions of hypothalamuses. I do recommend Coma, and also "Mutation" if you get the chance.

Michael Crichton is one of my favourite writers, but having read all of his novels, I was at a loss as to what to read next. Taking into account the fact that Crichton wrote and directed the movie of "Coma", I decided that the book of this film would probably be along the same lines as a Michael Crichton novel and I was right. Robin Cook is to medical thrillers what Michael Crichton is to technological thrillers.

This, Cook's second novel, tells of young medical student, Susan Wheeler and her quest to solve the mystery of why so many seemingly "healthy" patients are slipping into comas at the Boston Memorial Hospital. Although first published in 1977, over 30 years later this book is still relevant and exciting (although the description of the hospital's "state of the art" computer is laughable by modern standards). Being relatively new to writing, Cook does make some of the mistakes that you would expect of an inexperienced writer, and the ending was a bit abrupt for my liking, but in general, the mistakes are few and far between and aren't all that important.

Overall, the book is well written, the characters are believable and in Susan Wheeler, Cook creates a heroine whom I felt I could cheer for and identify with. Best of all, Cook does not talk down to his readers. He assumes that his readers are as intelligent as his characters. There is a lot of medical-talk in this book and by the end of it, I still didn't understand a lot of it, but simply from 380 pages of exposure, I felt that I had picked up some of it and felt like I had learnt something as a result.

Finally, prospective readers should note, in my edition of this book there is a letter from Robin Cook at the very beginning. If you don't already know what happens in "Coma", don't read this letter. It contains some major plot spoilers. You should also avoid reading the "Author's Note" (at the back of the book), until you have finished.

Coma was a good weekend read. The suspense built gradually from the very beginning and by the last few chapters was moving rapidly. As in any good suspense story, the author provides at least four conceivably potential perpetrators, yet the reader has no idea who the real culprit is until the very end, the same literary device found in nearly all suspense novels and Robin Cook pulls it off wonderfully well.

Cook's descriptions of hospital politics and hierarchal honchos abound and are as accurate today as they were twenty-five years ago, nothing has changed in this regard. However, issues of women breaking into medicine and women working along side male colleagues were beaten into the ground. Even by 1976 standards, the year the story took place, these concerns were overly explained and sermonized gratuitously. Once the point was made, it would have been sufficient to simply allude to it a few times, but the continual carping on equality in the workplace became a distraction to this otherwise very good suspense novel. This is my first Robin Cook novel. I will definitely read more of his works.

If I could have found a condensed version (generally I distain abridged editions), I would have enjoyed the book enough to give it four or five stars.

As Robin Cook explains at the end of this story, much of it is fact despite being sold as a fiction novel. This book was written in the late 70s, so I'm sure there have been advances, however I've seen exposes on shows such as 60 minutes (some time ago) exposing certain hospitals for their urgency on organ donors. One such program showed where a woman could have lived, but was a donor and was given the drugs required for donor harvesting. It was enough to convince me never to be a donor, nor to put it on my drivers' license. At any rate, this book will make you think and it's conclusion is probably a frightening reality in places like China where the stories of organs being harvested from prison inmates and death row inmates!

Impossible? No, not at all, because the patient/victim of organ harvesting doesn't receive the money into his estate for the donation. The hospital makes the money. Doesn't seem right to me and I doubt it seems right to many others.

Robin Cook's Coma is a gripping medical thriller with lots of surprises. It all starts with some patients having surgery on minor injuries. They are put to sleep for surgery, but after the surgery is over they still don't wake up. They're in a coma, hence the name. A new medical student by the name of Susan Wheeler is working at the hospital and finds these sudden cases suspicious. She decides to check into them and what she finds out is breathtaking. I loved this book because of all the suspense and action. I just never knew what was going to happen next. I would say it is one of Cook's best. I loved this book and I think you would too.

This was the first book by Robin Cook that I read. I picked it up at midnight one night and put it down when I finished! From there, I have since forged on to purchase and read all of his books! I have only one left, and I frequently pick one up and read it again and again!

This was a very easy and simple read. I was disappointed that this "thriller" had no surprises in the book and was very predictable. I found myself wishing the book would just end because it was so obvious what was going to happen.