Girlfriend In a Coma - Hardcover

Coupland, Douglas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002243962 ISBN 13: 9780002243964

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, 1998

Synopsis

The bestselling author of "Generation X" brings listeners the story of a pretty, 17-year-old Vancouver girl who lapses into a coma one December night in 1979, and leaves a group of friends confused by her loss. When she awakens 18 years later, they all experience terrifying changes. Simultaneous hardcover release from ReganBooks. April 1998 publication date.2 cassettes. .

About this title

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 semiresponsible 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.

About the Author:

Douglas Coupland is the author of twelve novels, including Generation X and Microserfs, and several works of nonfiction, including Polaroids from the Dead. He lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0002243962
• ISBN 13: 9780002243964
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1