Product Description

Coupland's funny, spot-on portrait of the death of the yuppie. Tyler Johnson is an apocalyptic entrepreneur in the making. His memories begin with Ronald Reagan. With his neat girlfriend, smart jokes and shampoo collection, he works at the nuclear power plant where his hippie parents used to demonstrate, plotting his fortune. But fortune has other plans - the return of a Paris summer fling, one of the 'low-ambition Euro-teens', who takes Tyler on the road to the shimmering dreams of L.A.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109414 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
Douglas Coupland was born on a Canadian NATO base in Beden-Sollingen, (West) Germany on December 30, 1961. He is the author of bestselling fiction, including GENERATION X, LIFE AFTER GOD, POLAROIDS FROM THE DEAD, MICROSERFS, GIRLFRIEND IN A COMA and ALL FAMILIES ARE PSYCHOTIC.

Customer Reviews

Something for the weekend
I read Coupland's other books before this one and approached this one almost expecting to be disappointed. I wasn't. It's obviously not his best but here Coupland has created a deliciously simple story centering around the tales protaganist, Tyler, and his not overly turbulent transition from unaffected youth to relatively unaffected early adulthood. In this one you will find typically cool Coupland dialogue, but it is more naive and, dare I say, even more zeitgeisy than gen x. The characters are younger and the novel serves to illustrate the differences in 60's peace and love and the 80's consumer mentality. His novels are never pessimistic, and the characters are far from the empty, disaffected, mixed up drones of say Easton Ellis. There is chaos, there is confusion but at the last page you are left with nothing but unbridled hope and the sweet taste of optimism.

Pretty good but no great shakes
I'm a big Douglas Coupland fan, this being his 8th book that I've read.

For some reason this one left me a bit cold. It's still witty, very well observed and wry, but all the others have managed to hook me in emotionally some how. This one didn't. The character of Stephanie seemed very forced and I never really believed in her 100%. Maybe he was trying too hard after the phenomenon that was Generation X?

It's not awful though. If you're a Coupland fan and like me will read all his work whatever the reviews then you're probably going to be slightly disappointed. If you're thinking of 'getting into him' I'd start with Gen X, Girlfriend in a Coma, Microserfs or Hey Nostradamus - all of which blew me away for different reasons.

Looks like Generation X, but it's not
When I saw the cover of this book I thought that I was in for a similar treat as with Generation X and Microserfs. It seems to sell it that way. But it came up short in comparison to those other two gems- ignore THEM at your peril.

It seems as though Coupland has used this as a warm up exercise: a gentle stretch of the observation and humour muscles, saving the heavy exercise for other novels.

Don't get me wrong, it's ok, but I guess like every person who produces works of brilliance such as Coupland has, you can be overly disappinted when you get something that is simply good. So my final advice would be, read this, but read Microserfs or Generation X first.