- Hardcover: 284 pages
- Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers; First Edition edition (1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002243962
- ISBN-13: 978-0002243964
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,506,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Girlfriend in a Coma (P.S.)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
In this latest novel from the poet laureate of Gen X--who is himself now a dangerously mature 36--boy does indeed meet girl. The year is 1979, and the lovers get right down to business in a very Couplandian bit of plein air intercourse: "Karen and I deflowered each other atop Grouse Mountain, among the cedars beside a ski slope, atop crystal snow shards beneath penlight stars. It was a December night so cold and clear that the air felt like the air of the Moon--lung-burning; mentholated and pure; hint of ozone, zinc, ski wax, and Karen's strawberry shampoo." Are we in for an archetypal '80s romance, played out against a pop-cultural backdrop? Nope. Only hours after losing her virginity, Karen loses consciousness as well--for almost two decades. The narrator and his circle soldier on, making the slow progression from debauched Vancouver youths to semi-responsible adults. Several end up working on a television series that bears a suspicious resemblance to The X-Files (surely a self-referential wink on the author's part). And then ... Karen wakes up. Her astonishment-- which suggests a 20th-century, substance-abusing Rip Van Winkle--dominates the second half of the novel, and gives Coupland free reign to muse about time, identity, and the meaning (if any) of the impending millennium. Alas, he also slaps a concluding apocalypse onto the novel. As sleeping sickness overwhelms the populace, the world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a universal yawn--which doesn't, fortunately, outweigh the sweetness, oddity, and ironic smarts of everything that has preceded it.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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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First Sentence
I'm Jared, a ghost. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I'm Jared, a ghost. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've never read Douglas Copeland before and I found that this was an amazing book. It has the kind of prose that you just eat up. Copeland seemingly writes so easily and descriptively that after I'd finished I couldn't believe he'd created such a complete and satisfying book in so few pages.
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.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian Author whose early 90's novel Generation X accidently defined a generation struggling to grow into adulthood. This late 90's novel may well be his best work to date (though personally it is a close call between this and his 2003 novel Hey Nostradamus).
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?
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've never been too sure about how to pronounce his name "Cope-land" or "Coop-land". Most times I just settle for Doug. I've had a long standing adoration for Coupland's work both written and constructed. I made a special visit to the Canadian High Commission in London to see some furniture Coupland had designed around notions of what it is to be Canadian. I also trekked to Stratford Upon Avon where I was shocked by Doug performing his play "September 10th, 2001." This sexy sounding Canadian had turned into Ernest Hemingway without anyone warning me.
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.
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A promising but ultimately frustrating vision
Based in a series of alternate realities, portrayed with varying style and interest; Douglas Coupland's `Girlfriend in a Coma' is an original and somewhat entertaining work, which... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Mr. D Burin
Good middle but does a Dallas
It started out well, the middle also improved, and it became particularly gripping near the end.
However it disappoints with a horrendous ending which is akin to and I... Read more
However it disappoints with a horrendous ending which is akin to and I... Read more
Published 24 months ago by Paul M
possibly the worst book I have ever read
Abysmal. Don't ask me how I managed to finish this work of horrific crap,I put it down to morbid curiosity. Read more
Published on 18 Dec 2009 by Mr. Bg Terranova
Start reading one book, finish reading another!
I started to read this book, thinking I was just going to read about the experience of a girl waking up from a coma after 17 years, which I did. Read more
Published on 5 Aug 2009 by N. A. Dartnal-smith
Bittersweet and melancholy
Something about this book tears at your soul a little. The characters go from the halcyon days of their youth to their jaded and cynical adulthood so believably. Read more
Published on 16 April 2009 by Lisa Deick
I wish I was in a coma
I loved Microserfs so much, I was shocked when I discovered that Coupland had never worked for Microsoft (!) so it pains me to admit that I struggled my way through this book. Read more
Published on 11 Dec 2008 by A. Furse
Not coma inducing
I read this when i was a lot younger and loved it. It was a simple story but incorporated big ideas and themes. A real weepy one.
Published on 5 Oct 2007 by Cl Williams
Certainly makes you think
I think some of the previous reviewers of this book may have missed its point slightly. The story might be a little far fetched (although - as the recent re-release explains - it... Read more
Published on 2 July 2007 by Mark B
Utterly depressing!
What a boring book, I usually always feel compelled to finish reading a book, whether I like it or not but this was just too boring. Read more
Published on 1 July 2007 by claire
Different
This is not my usual type of book, but it caught my eye on one of those "books you must read" lists and I decided to give it a go. Read more
Published on 6 May 2007 by gerty guinea
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