Coma

Coma

3.77 of 5 stars 3.77  ·  rating details  ·  19,482 ratings  ·  270 reviews

Still considered one of the best of the genre, Coma propelled Robin Cook to the top of his field and earned him a reputation as the "master of the medical thriller" (New York Times). Now readers have another chance to discover this classic masterwork of nightmarish possibility.

Paperback, 320 pages
Published March 1st 1977 by Signet Books (first published January 1st 1977)
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(showing 1-30 of 3,000)
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Greg of A2
Okay, who hasn't read this book or seen the movie? It was a phenomenon in its day. And it was a decent suspense, thriller novel. But the only Cook novel I ever read.
Mitch
Who knew that I would enjoy a medical thriller? This genre is new to me. And I recently read a book about a coma in a totally different genre ("Anything But Ordinary" by my lovely neighbour Lara Avery) and when I found this book on my bookshelf my interest of comas and the mind during comas (it's so fricken mysterious) made me pick it up. And BOY OH BOY am I glad I did!

The following may or may not contain spoilers.

Susan Wheeler is a young and beautiful (of course) medical student who discovers t...more
Brian
* Coma starts out so well and encompasses such a wonderfully sinister plot that it's a shame it had to be written by Robin Cook. I read the author's Shock not too long ago. In the nearly 25 years that had elapsed between the publication of the books, Cook clearly hadn't learned a thing about creating believable characters or plot complications. Why should he, when his books are bestsellers?

* Cook writes like a bad TV show: if you don't approach it passively, you can't possibly enjoy it. That's h...more
Sara
I’m ashamed to admit, but I picked this book up after seeing a picture from the movie. The picture showed people hanging from the ceiling (just like the cover of the book) and it was intriguing. The synopsis of the book sounded fun, and since I haven’t read a medical thriller, I thought I would give it a try. Granted, it was weird reading about a character struggling with being one of the few females in the medical profession, and all of the sexism that follows…especially since it was written by...more
Deemah
اجابات .. اجابات .. اننا نبحث دائما عنها .. فكما ان لكل علبه غطاء .. ولكل بدايه نهايه .. ولكل سؤال اجابه ..

تظل الاسئله كالهاجس دومـا , عالقه بالرأس .. تأبى ان تتزحزح.. تجعلنا ( بطريقتها ) نخضع لها ..

لكن .. هل نركض خلفها .. هل يستحق الجري عكس التيار لأجلها . ؟ فقط لأننا نرى ما لا يرونه الغير .. ونشعر بما لا يشعر به الغير .. انها مسأله نظرة . مسأله ثقه بالذات ربما ..

" لا أدري .. إن شيئا وراء كل هذا .. شيئا خارقا للطبيعه .. شيئاً مشؤماً "

" ياإلهي سوزان .. والآن اصبتي بجنون الأرتياب ؟ "

لكن عندما نسأ...more
Richard
Reading other reviews of this book, I got the general impression that Coma is the best of the bunch. So if Coma is the best, the rest must be dire.

The storyline was ok and possibly believable and his writing style at times was very good. But most of the time, I foound I was super-speed reading to get out of all the medical technical jargon and detailed descriptions of drugs, techniques, processes, etc. For the layman with reasonable intelligence, I found the book very hard going and boring at ti...more
Oscar Torrado
Mi primera experiencia con un thriller médico y muy a pesar de que pensé que iba a quedar perdido o resultar aburrido, simplemente quedé con ganas de más.

La historia nos presenta a Susan Wheeler una estudiante de medicina que se ve envuelta en toda una telaraña de conspiraciones y misterios sobre una serie de casos de pacientes comatosos en un reconocido hospital de Boston.

Robin Cook maneja de maravilla el suspenso dentro de la historia, la paranoia de la protagonista, haciéndonos dudar, como l...more
Dan Curley
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Julia Madeleine
This book was huge when it first came out. I read it when I was in my teens and loved it. It was probably the first medical thriller I've ever read. I saw the movie when it was released staring Michael Douglas (love those books to movies), and back then it was pretty scary. Probably that was due in large part to my youth. Everything is scarier when you're a kid.

The premise of this book is wicked; going into the hospital for routine surgery and never waking up from the anesthetic. I think that ap...more
MaryReads
Revolutionary for its time. This book and the derivative movie actually changed the culture and direction of an entire Nation of people. As a result, it should be considered a land mark work - regardless of "literary" merit.

Not so science fiction now that violent and nonconsensual organ harvesting is taking place in China on a very real and massive scale (they are the number one importer of organ translate anti-rejection drugs yet also one of the lowest for voluntary organ donation due to the ma...more
Kris
I read A LOT of medical mystery books in high school, but Coma is one my favorites of this genre. The storyline is plausible enough that it won't make you roll your eyes, and Robin Cook is good at keeping things tense enough that you want to keep reading. If you like this one, he has a lot of others that are fun to read.
Samantha
Coma is a fun thriller to read if you don't want to think too much. I enjoyed it for its fast pace and it was definitely a page-turner towards the end. On the negative side, the characters (especially the female protagonist) were pretty one-dimensional and the plot line was a bit too predictable for me (I had never seen the movie or had the ending spoiled, but I figured it out pretty early on). The most frustrating part was that it made no sense for the protagonist to suddenly ditch all of her m...more
Charles Turek
Since this work, Robin Cook has become a prolific author of medical thrillers and not a few that have some non-medical themes. This one is far and away the best of the genre, and leads the way for all the rest. It has tight drama, good characterization, scary situations and a plot twist that leaves you wondering if you will ever trust your doctor again. Maybe you haven't seen the movie. If not, that's okay. The movie is dated. The beauty of the book is that the plotting, characterization, and ac...more
Sanjay
As i am 18 years Old...I have read a few books of indian authors..when i was gazing at the shelves of a book store..i found a row of books by ROBIN COOK...as i am very interested in Thriller type plots...i have bought that book and started reading...as i was not that much connected to foreign authors it seems little difficult for me at the beginning...but as i continue it has taken me to the peak level anxiety...
THe book was well scripted and it was including gruesome situations...the author ha...more
Bfg1971
Coma was a fun quick read. I found the story to be kind of predictable, but it was interesting to read a book that is so old but was cutting edge in its day.

The thing that I vividly remember about Coma was the period of time when all of my aunts, uncles, and my parents were passing it around on vacation or at my grandparents house. The cover of the book terrified me.

I recently read a non-fiction book called The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers--How Medicine Is...more
Jackie
The ultimate discovery is sinister and the plot intriguing. However, my anticipated enjoyment of this medical thriller was undermined by my inability to care about the characters. While I understand that Susan, the main protagonist, being a woman in the field of medicine at the time this novel was written was something that likely encountered a gendered bias. Heck, I'd still believe that bias is still possible to exist even by today's standards. But I don't think Susan simply being a woman in me...more
Christine
The story really pulls you along, but I have a few quibbles with it. First, it should take a lot longer to escalate to the point that it ultimately does--the whole story takes place in a matter of 3 days, and it's just not really believable. Second, the main character, Susan Wheeler would NEVER be allowed, nor would she actually try, to pull off three quarters of the things she manages in this book. She'd have been shut down so fast, it's not even funny. But it's a good diversion of a book, and...more
Anand Jayakrishnan
This is not a bad book..not a good one too.Despite a strong and intriguing plot, coma is a disappointment.Coma is about a medical student who tries to uncover the mystery behind coma cases in a hospital.The main problem with coma is lack of character development.I also felt like reading a medical encyclopedia..too much medical terms... often complicated and kept aside a dictionary while reading.sometimes that also fails to do the job.I just give 2 stars for this book only because of an interesti...more
Mac
This was the first book of his I read; it was a great medical thriller. Unfortunately the author settled into a formula for most of his other stories: the villain is always someone close to the protagonist; either a mentor or(if of opposite sex) a sexual chemistry develops between the two but the hero never consummates the relationship. Other books of the author I would recommend are: "Fever", "Brain", and "Mutation". The rest are OK reads but I guarantee, you'll know who the villain is halfway...more
Lindsey
May 09, 2012 Lindsey rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Lindsey by: Andrew Portwine
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Eman
بحب الروايات الطبية اللي فيها جو المستشفيات

كان ممكن أبقى دكتورة لولا أني لا أتحمل المواقف الصعبة فأعصابي تتأثر بسهولة

حتى أنني اذا وصف أي مشهد للدم أو حدث سوءا للمريض لا أستطيع مسك القصة بيدي أو أسند نفسي جيدا

يصبح كل شيء فجأة مؤلما في جسدي وتتخدر يدي وأجاهد لأجعلها تتماسك

أذكر مشهدا لذلك وأنا أقرأ الجزء الرابع من أجزاء توايلايت " بزوغ الفجر " مشهد الولادة كان رهيبا لم أستطع الامساك بالرواية والتي كانت تزن عدة كيلو جرامات :)

أعتقد أنها أكبر حجم قرأته لرواية

إضافة إلى أن هرمون الخوف عندي عالي جدا...more
Terri Lynn
I first read this in 1977 at age 18 when it first came out and was a Robin Cook fan thereafter. I decided to re-read it this month and compare what my 18 year old self thought with what my 53 year old self thinks.

Third year medical student Susan Wheeler , along with 4 male medical school classmates, are assigned to Boston Memorial Hospital to begin learning first hand about surgery and patient care.

There are some aspects of this book and about women in medicine that I really want to discuss. I...more
Maggie
Really disliked this book, and the author's writing style. I read this when it was first released years ago and havent read anything by the author ever since. His writing style is very limited, with no development of character, but plenty of bias and improbable totally unbelievable storyline. The plot comes at you - wham bam, and is ridiculous. I am all in favour of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story but this book goes beyond that. The lead character, Susan, is a know it all me...more
Lloyd
In what has been hinted at as the first novel where author Robin Cook comes into his true style, he breaks the somewhat dragging early plot wide open in the last hundred or so pages for a BIG payoff.

When patients at Boston Memorial Hospital start dropping into comas at a somewhat alarming rate, third year med student Susan Wheeler decides to poke around a little. What she finds is startling in terms of plot and even more startling in the fact that it could be true-to-life.

Fans of Cook, medical t...more
Jennifer
Coma is a medical mystery written originally published in 1977. The medical world and the average person's knowledge of health and medicine have expanded hugely in the thirty-plus years that have passed. I was delighted to find that amongst the predictable parts of the book, there were still some surprising twists to find. The mystery was very good, even now, and must have been mind-blowing in its day.

My rather large problem with the book was in the form of the main character, Susan. She's a med...more
Bill
I was expecting more from this book. After all, it was a best-seller and launched both a major motion picture and Robin Cook's career. I'm not entirely sure why. Somehow the story manages to stumble along and keep the reader interested, but it has a number of problems. I personally hung with it only because I knew something would (or should) eventually happen.

First is the matter of the heroine, Susan, a third-year medical student whose one strength is that she's convinced that the two coma cases...more
Marc
"Coma" is a medical mystery/thriller by Robin Cook. It was the initial book that earned him the reputation as a successful author. It's a pretty good book. A little weird in places. And the main character has all the common sense of a doorknob.

Susan is a third year medical student in Boston just starting her first day at Memorial hospital. She soon comes into contact with two patients who have inexplicably ended up in comas. For some reason, she immediately becomes obsessed with these comas and...more
Milka
So this book has a few flaws...
1) Being Robin Cook's first novel, it could have used more thorough editing. I'm not sure why it didn't. Also, the first third of the book was a little too slow paced for me. The editing could probably have fixed that too.
2) Some of the underlying themes seem outdated today, almost 40 years after the book was written. Woman doctors are a lot common today and I doubt there is as much sexism as described in this story. How do I know? I've watched plenty of ER and Gr...more
Alexis
Coma is one of the most chilling books I have read by this author. As I was reading, I was continulously shocked and amazed that doctors would do such outrageous things, such as modifying the anesthetic agent or procedure.

When I reached the end of the novel and discovered the real truth behind the doctors' actions, I was utterly and completely horrified.

Cook's writing style is so vivid and incredibly detailed that you feel as though you're right there with the characters, experiencing what the...more
Malini
I'd forgotten about this book, until recently, when I unpacked some of my many boxes of books in storage and found this book lying on the bottom. This was one of the very first medical dramas I'd ever read in high school that my Aunt left behind when she visited us from abroad. I recalled that I read this overnight. I miss those thrilling book devouring days and nights... Needless to say, this book was certainly a rapid page turner, entertaining at the very least.
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Coma (Paperback)
الغيبوبة (Paperback)
Coma (Paperback)
Coma (Paperback)
Coma (Hardcover)

19697
Librarian Note: Not to be confused with British novelist Robin Cook a pseudonym of Robert William Arthur Cook.

Dr. Robin Cook (born May 4, 1940 in New York City, New York) is an American doctor / novelist who writes about medicine and topics affecting public health.

He is best known for being the author who combined medical writing with the thriller genre of writing. Several of his books have been b...more
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