Girlfriend in a Coma

by DOUGLAS COUPLAND | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0060987324 Global Overview for this book
Registered by msjoanna of Columbia, Missouri USA on 3/22/2008
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by msjoanna from Columbia, Missouri USA on Saturday, March 22, 2008
From Kirkus Reviews
The writer who gave a generation its well-deserved ``X'' returns to the quasi-theological themes of his third novel, Life After God (1994), and again wanders off into spacey, New Age platitudes about death and transcendence. Although God makes no personal appearances here, He's represented by the ghost of an 18-year-old football player whose life touched all the aimless souls wandering through this media- literate narrative. After a gimmicky prologue in the voice of the dead Jared, Coupland soon shifts gears, displaying a new-found maturity and sharpness. Spanning two decades in the close-knit lives of friends in Vancouver, his kinetic text begins with the episode that lands the narrator's girlfriend in her 18-year coma. But whether it was the mix of pills and booze or Karen's premonition of a dreary future that rendered her comatose, the tragedy reverberates among her pals, whose lives will spiral out of control over the next two decades. Her boyfriend, Richard, the narrator, remains a faithful visitor to her bedside, through his go-go years as a stockbroker and his bouts of alcoholism. Of course, he must deal with their growing daughter, conceived the night before Karen's coma and unaware of her mother for seven years. And Karen's friends, to a person, all feel like losers, despite successful careers as a supermodel (Pam) and a doctor (Wendy). Drugs, overwork, and sheer boredom trouble even the seemingly-centered Linus, who eventually returns to Vancouver with all the rest. With everyone sleepwalking through life, Karen miraculously awakes, but her worst visions come true--and here the story veers into disaster-movieland, with a sleep-inducing plague overwhelming the planet. Jared returns to teach them about self-sacrifice and the need to change their lives, relying on all sorts of utopian blather and spiritual nostrums. Sappy at its core, but showing signs nonetheless of Coupland's evolution as a novelist not wholly dependent on trend- spotting and zeitgeisty patter.
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Bought as a gift from the wishlist of my May Day Exchange partner. I'll read it before sending as I've been wanting to read something by this author and this is as good a reason as any.

Journal Entry 2 by msjoanna from Columbia, Missouri USA on Monday, March 24, 2008
The first half of this book was a really interesting and well-written novella about loss, grief, and loneliness and the rippling impact of tragedy. I was even willing to suspend disbelief to allow the title character to (against all odds) wake from her coma after seventeen years. But then the book just went off the rails. The "apocolypse" was overly preachy, simplistic, and just silly. I can hardly express how disappointed I was with the final 100 pages or so. Without giving away too much plot, I'll say that the very end was rather touching, but didn't come close to making up for the utterly ridiculous sci-fi turn that the book took.

I hope my May Day Exchange Partner enjoys the second half of this book more than I did. The reviews of this book are really mixed -- those that loved it and those that hated the second half. I'm definitely in the hated the second half camp.

Journal Entry 3 by akashafamily from Lithgow, New South Wales Australia on Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Thank you msjoanna for sending me this wishlist book for the May Day Exchange, I really appreciate it.

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