Alex Garland’s “The Beach” examines what might be viewed as a collective drug induced psychosis, while “The Coma” utilises pictures and narration to examine the effect of severe head injury and coma on perception and memory.

“During the cab ride from the hospital, I had felt apprehensive about what psychological fall-out I might expect from the attack.  It seemed to me that it would be at home that the fall-out would make itself felt, as I tried to reintroduce myself to normality after such an abnormal and shocking incident.  The familiarity of home would force a juxtaposition that the unfamiliarity of the hospital had not.  Specifically, I think I was concerned about nightmares – reliving the attack in a dream world, where perhaps the dream would loop endlessly; where the attack might be even more brutal and unpleasant than its real counterpart.”

“But the feeling remained.  Whether I was or I wasn’t, I felt translucent.”

“It had all worked out like this:

I’m attacked.

I fall unconscious.

I think I wake.

The world is fractured and weird.

I think I’m traumatised.

I think I’m brain-damaged.

I realise I am neither, I’m in a coma.

I realise I have to wait.

So I plan.

I look a catalyst, and I find a fragment of a memory, in the form of Miss Molly.

By searching, and by coaxing, I find more fragments.

Gardens, swings, bricks and windows.

They lead me to the house where I grew up.

Where the Miss Molly memory is placed in context.

Where I become light and weightless.

And the memory becomes complete.

As complete as it needs to be.

And-perhaps this is where I congratulate myself the most-I do all this alone.  I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it’s my head I’m locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself.”