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Amazon.co.uk Review
Review
‘This is a millennial novel of a very subtle and interesting kind. It’s visually brilliant, full of extraordinary imagery, fresh like new paint. I was absolutely knocked over by it.’
Tom Paulin, The Late Review
‘I was amazed by it. The dialogue is some of the most brilliant I’ve ever read in a novel. It’s a great wake-up call to young Americans everywhere.’
Mark Lawson, author of Bloody Margaret
‘What I found most moving and gripping about the book is that Coupland, the poet laureate of the slack generation, is clearly struggling with maturity, struggling with the expectations of his youth and the realities of his life. A wholly original and successful novel.’
Tony Parsons
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I'm Jared, a ghost. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
The fact that Karen is in a coma for 17 years and that you have followed the life of her friends through that time and only a 3rd of the book is finished is incredible. The 2nd third is packed with moving descriptions of every day life, love and self-discovery, only to then have a bolt out of the blue for the last third that is a post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world truly surreal yet strangely gripping scenario. The ending does jolt a little, but if you go with it, I believe that Copeland achieves his aim of making you question modern day life, its' trapping and its' ultimate emptiness.
I was very very impressed. The book is really deep (man), and examines the meaningless of life and adulthood and the loss of dreams, yet it isn't a chore to plough through, it's a pleasure.
Coupland takes a group of characters surrounded by pop culture references and global branding and sees them from their teens through to their thirties before forcing them to confront issues that they were always to busy to think about; love, death, family, enviromental destruction, the future and what exactly are we here for anyway? Most western readers born since the wars will recognise the world the characters live in and are equally to busy to confront these important issues. To this end the book often feels like a refreshing and some times desturbing critique of the readers own life expirence. Some reviewrs here suggest that this is ham fisted. But although the writing style is stark in places I found the story all the more shocking and immersive because of it.
The books takes it's name from a song title by seminal 80's guitar popsters The Smiths and their lyrics are liberally scattered through out the chapters. Spotting these is a real treat for any Morrissey or Smiths fan but never dominates the story and characters. Music journalists have often put the Smiths cross generational legacy down to their popularity with young people struggling with the transition into adulthood. The books appeal is very similair and it feels like an essential read for any one in their late teens to mid twenties.
Girlfirned in a Coma is an accssible, engrossing and easy read, the characters are great and the story is an excellent snap shot of the culture of it's time. But at the same time it deals with the most heavy weight issue since the enlightenment;
now that the West has got rid of God, how do we find lasting satisfaction?
And how do we approach the sticky subject of our inevitable deaths?
The book offers no answers. It feels as if it intends the reader, like the central characters, to go away and think seriously for themsevles. For this reason I believe it is a masterpiece.
Why are you here?
How you'll respond to this review will probably depend on your previous encounters with Doug. People are generally divided into two categories: 1) those who think he's ultimate social commentator and 2) those who think he's just another pop culture junkie. I fall into a third category 1.5) those who are unsure whether Doug adores pop culture or if he's gently mocking it. I got to have the briefest of conversations with the Big Man Himself in Stratford after the show and I asked him directly. He smiled enigmatically and said "No one's asked me that before..." and drifted away humming. I was, like, totally bummed.
"Girlfriend in a coma" is a Smiths song title. The song contains the haunting lyric "let me whisper my last goodbye" which is a good way into the novel. The novel tells the story of a group of friends growing up in Vancouver, Canada in the late 1970's. On the night of a teenage house-wrecking party Karen, falls into a coma. More alarmingly, she seemed to expect it, having given her boyfriend, Richard, a letter detailing the vivid dreams of the future she had experienced and how she wanted to sleep for a thousand years to avoid that vision.
The opening of the novel is a vision of what happens after the end of the world relayed to us by Jared, a ghost. It's a shocking and despairing vision of a world without people, technology and concern. Jared tells us that most of us don't learn from second chances that we really learn from third chances- "after losing and wasting vast sums of time, money, youth and energy". The first part of the book covers the next 17 years in the lives of Jared's friends- the friends who "finally learned their lesson". The story, as Jared puts it, gets bigger than any individual and includes all of us and ultimately becomes Jared's story.
I don't want to flesh out the plot lines as the organic growth of the novel is something to savour. Meeting and getting to know about the characters, following their stories and ending up at one of the most chilling finales in fiction. Anyone who liked, loved or was moved by "it's a wonderful life" will enjoy GFIAC.
I can promise you this book won't make you a better manager, won't help you be a better lover, won't improve your social life, won't give you six/seven/eight handy hints on how to be more effective. This book will however draw you in, lull you into thinking you know how it will end and then chew you up, break you into small pieces and then spit you out. Then ending of the novel is a rallying cry for awareness, questioning and being totally present. It's the ultimate "plan b" for humanity. Plan A isn't doing us that well and Doug provides us with a way of creating a new paradigm. Buy this novel. It will change you.
However it disappoints with a horrendous ending which is akin to and I... Read more
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