A slight book in size but, as far as psychological insight goes, a heavyweight. This is a study of the kind of tricks the mind might play on the person who is in a coma, where memories and dreams fade and return, lapse between imagination and reality, and consciousness weighs in the balance. There's a strong element of probability, as it recalls the sort of image discontinuity that we experience in our dreams.

The narrative is illustrated by the author's father, Nicholas Garland, a political cartoonist for the London Daily Telegraph. His woodcut-like drawings are dark and indistinct, sometimes barely more than outlines and silhouettes that capture perfectly the darkness of the story atmosphere, suggesting even further the shadowy, half-seen objects, people and scenes in the nightmarish account.

Highly emotional, closely contained and just a bit spooky in its precision, it raises a liklihood in a physiogical mystery, the awareness or lack of it in a person whose consciousness is imprisoned for unpredictable durations.

Garland's own mind seems to work within super-real orbits, in that he also authored the screenplay for the acclaimed sci-fi film, "28 Days."