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Miss Wyoming [Paperback]

Douglas Coupland
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Feb 2000

The brilliant new novel from the bestselling cult author of them all.

Susan and John need to disappear – Susan and John need to find each other.

Meet Susan Colgate – Miss Wyoming. Winner of a hundred teen pageants, child star of Meet the Blooms (America’s favourite family), owner of a hideously pushy mother… and now reduced to small, brainless parts in small, brainless movies. Oh, and sole survivor of Flight 802. If she were to walk away from the wreckage now, before the emergency crews get here, she could disappear and nobody would ever know…

Meet John Johnson – action film star (Bel Air P.I… um, Bel Air P.I. 2), occasional sado-masochist, junkie. He just died – but only for 5 minutes. All the crap he’s done to his body over the years, and it’s a flu that killed him! But while he was gone, he saw a vision of a woman’s face and realized that it was time to escape, to ditch the baggage of being horny, rich, lonely John Johnson and to lose himself. To disappear.

Wouldn’t it be nice if they were to find themselves and get together?

In many ways a reprise of Girlfriend in a Coma (60,000 copies sold in paperback in its first three months…), Miss Wyoming represents a further leap forwards into the World According to Coupland – a witty, genuinely funny look at who we are, how we can change, and how we can make a difference.


Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Flamingo; 1st. Edition edition (Feb 2000)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0002259834
  • ISBN-13: 978-0002259835
  • Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.6 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,315,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Product Description

Amazon Review

Heroine of this outstanding tale is Miss Wyoming, Susan Colgate, teen beauty-queen and low-rent soap actress. Dragooned into stardom by her demonically pushy, hillbilly mother, Susan's career is at rock-bottom. When she finds herself sole survivor of an air-crash, she views it as her opportunity to vanish, embarking on a voyage of personal discovery.

Meanwhile, John Johnson, debauched star of such Hollywood legends as Bel Air PI², also longs to vanish. After a near-death experience, where he is treated to a vision of Susan's face, he roams the badlands of the western States. Back in L.A., a chance meeting sets him on a mission to unravel the mystery of Susan Colgate.

Coupland has a genius for capturing the absurdities of modern existence and using them as backdrop for a tale of hope and fulfilment. The curses of the cyber-age--junk-mail and web-junkies, fast food, jaded TV weather forecasters--teem around the central story, creating a vivid and darkly funny tale. His peripheral characters are just as richly drawn. A scriptwriter and his supernaturally intelligent girlfriend, a recluse who spends his evening generating Internet rumours--all manage to be blessed and cursed, numbed by their pointless existences but full of humanity when put to the test. Picture Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut co-writing Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and you come halfway to grasping Coupland's uniquely funny and thoughtful brand of storytelling. --Matthew Baylis

Review

Praise for Girlfriend in a Coma:

‘An ambitious new urban myth… Coupland has managed to marry a parable to his sociological observational skills, at the same time avoiding a mawkish, sentimental story… A dark, prescient book, a meditation on the mystery of life, the next step in a continuing search for meaning.’
Mike Bradley, The Times

‘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, Late Review


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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Wyoming: Hit or Miss? 22 Feb 2000
By A Customer
A self-confessed Coupland junkie, I don't know quite what to make of his latest. It once again has uncharted subject matter, glorious characters-as-possibilities, and pretty much all the warmth and zeitgeist-grabbing accuracy of his previous works, yet it somehow doesn't allow the reader to engage with it in the same way as "GenX" and the story collection "Life after God".

Where the hyperreal fantasy episodes of "Girlfriend in a Coma" pulled you in and left you breathless, the flights from reality in Miss Wyoming come across as absurd plot contrivances. They wink at you with a "God, you wouldn't believe this if it happened in a book" impudence, but end up causing the same empty ache that John experiences on realising that Susan didn't appear to him in a sublime vision at all, but was merely his own post-resuscitation confusion of a mid afternoon TV re-run.

Having said that, Vanessa, the freakishy intelligent think-tanker and Ryan, the shrine-building scriptwriter are my favourite DC creations to date. A book to re-read, if not to treasure forever.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly constructed and very affecting. 3 Oct 2001
By A Customer
Miss Wyoming is possibly Coupland's most accessible novel to date. It's also one of his most best and most readable.

A tale of two individual people as they try to find meaning in their lives, the narrative is excellent as their stories cleverly reflect each other.

The book also horrifies as it captures the disturbing nature of the child/teen-beauty queen circuit and its uncomfortable implications.

A very good read.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Writing, Sad Story 29 Dec 2000
By A Customer
Although I just love DC's style of writing, and am blown away by his observations of the mundane, I often find that the endings of his stories are never as gripping or moving as the middle bits. I guess I'm not into finding myself yet, so maybe I'm missing the point, but I kind of cringe when DC goes all evangelist on us. Miss Wyoming is well worth reading, but, sorry to say, could be better.
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5.0 out of 5 stars More optimistic than 'Coma' 24 July 2000
I have read and enjoyed all of Coupland's work, but I've always had to make sure I was in a positive frame of mind before starting (because I knew I'd be depressed by the end). I think this is the first Coupland I've read that hasn't had me gnashing my teeth at the pointlessness of it all in the final couple of pages. It was also nice to see that he hadn't depended on flights of fancy to remove his plot from confusion. I kept on expecting an ending akin to 'Coma' where all the protagonists were flown off in a space ship to the Disappeared Celebrity mother planet or something. So I was pleasantly surprised when that didn't happen. Anyway, buy it, read it, and then make all your friends who haven't read any Coupland start with this one.
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5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT! 22 July 2000
By A Customer
Simply Brilliant! Another great book from Coupland.Better than Gen X, Shampoo Planet on a par with Microserfs and Girlfriend In A Coma.

BUY THIS BOOK NOW YOU FOOL!

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4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, back to near his best 9 Jun 2000
By A Customer
It took me a long time to get the courage to buy this book after reading the surreal piece of garbage that was 'GF in a coma' but i'm glad i did. Interesting, entertaining and above all real.
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2.0 out of 5 stars Great start but goes downhill 26 April 2000
I thought Microserfs was great - but I can't help feeling that DC's other books have strong beginnings and weak endings. This was no exception. Very easy to read but also increasingly obvious the further I got.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Coupland moves on.... 22 April 2000
By A Customer
Douglas Coupland is one of America's best writers at the moment, and Miss Wyoming sees him moving on from ultra-zeitgeisty novels to something with a wider resonance. Again Coupland's theme is the search for meaning in people's lives in the face of relentlessly shallow popular culture. As with Girlfriend in a Coma there is a surreal magical edge to the story which leads us to suspend our literal sense of what 'is' and enjoy the story.

Coupland has yet to write a bad novel, however this is not his best. That is probably because his characters are more difficult to identify with because they are the sort of people who star in movies and soaps on Channel 5. I think most people have more in common with the nerds and losers in Microserfs and Generation X!

Like his other novels, Miss Wyoming is funny and perceptive and surprisingly emotional, and I am really looking forward to Coupland's next one!

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