Nicholas's Reviews > Coma
Coma (Mulholland Classic)
by
by
Okay, after three books I'm calling it. Time of death is 19:47 hours. How on Earth is Cook a best-selling novelist instead of someone printing up stories in his garage to send to family at Christmas?
Coma is a wretched book. Cook couldn't write an interesting, strong, or likable character if you held a gun to his head. The words in the book repeatedly tell us how beautiful and (more importantly) how smart the protagonist, Susan, is. But the actual words that represent what she thinks and says tell us that, in fact, she's a god damn paranoid moron. She's a terrible doctor-in-training and a pretty unpleasant, manipulative, whiny person. And that's not even considering the stuff about how hard it is to be a doctor as a woman (a legitimate topic, especially for the time frame in which this was written).
He doesn't save the horrible writing for just the protagonist though. Every character in this book is poorly conceived and executed, except for one nurse, one security guard and a dead guy that we never actually hear from.
In this novel, Cook demonstrates a terrible grasp of character, plotting, pacing, feminism, descriptions, decent endings, phrasings, and writing in general. Which, I suppose, is why he relies so very heavily on medical jargon. It's the only thing he really understands. And you know what, he may be a great doctor. And should stick with that instead of delivering an onslaught of tripe like this.
Coma is a wretched book. Cook couldn't write an interesting, strong, or likable character if you held a gun to his head. The words in the book repeatedly tell us how beautiful and (more importantly) how smart the protagonist, Susan, is. But the actual words that represent what she thinks and says tell us that, in fact, she's a god damn paranoid moron. She's a terrible doctor-in-training and a pretty unpleasant, manipulative, whiny person. And that's not even considering the stuff about how hard it is to be a doctor as a woman (a legitimate topic, especially for the time frame in which this was written).
He doesn't save the horrible writing for just the protagonist though. Every character in this book is poorly conceived and executed, except for one nurse, one security guard and a dead guy that we never actually hear from.
In this novel, Cook demonstrates a terrible grasp of character, plotting, pacing, feminism, descriptions, decent endings, phrasings, and writing in general. Which, I suppose, is why he relies so very heavily on medical jargon. It's the only thing he really understands. And you know what, he may be a great doctor. And should stick with that instead of delivering an onslaught of tripe like this.
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Reading Progress
January 30, 2015
–
Started Reading
January 30, 2015
– Shelved
February 7, 2015
–
Finished Reading