Product Description

His fans favourite book. YOU ARE THE FIRST GENERATION RAISED WITHOUT RELIGION What happens if we are raised without religion or beliefs? As we grow older, the beauty and disenchantments of the world temper our souls. We all have spiritual impulses, yet where do these impulses flow in a world of commodities and consumerism? LIFE AFTER GOD is a compellingly innovative collection of stories responding to these themes. Douglas Coupland takes us into worlds we know exist but rarely see, finding rare grace amid our pre-millennium turmoil.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43544 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

Beautifully written - a strange but moving masterpiece
I'll admit to having read many of Coupland's books. As a chronicler of our vacuous, materialist age and the damage it inflicts on us as human beings, he is without peer. After his seemingly more substantial works like All Families Are Psychotic, Eleanor Rigby and Hey Nostradamus, the pared down, minimalist structure of Life After God at first seemed ethereal and a cop-out even. But as I read on, I realised that in Coupland's case, less is more.

This is a profound and almost scary take on modern life. The structure (there are several narrators) and lack of plot in the conventional sense may make it hard for some to appreciate, but as with all Coupland's books I found myself laughing aloud one minute and pondering deep sorrow the next. He has an uncanny ability to nail the quintessential element in a vague emotion and nail it. Here's one of my favourites;

"Now: I believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting herion with the Princess of Wales , naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still wouldn't compare to the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool...."

Brilliant. Buy it. Read it. Read it again. Delicious!

Though provoking
Coupland takes us on a journey that succeedes in making emotional contact again and again. Told in a series of short recollections, impressions and observations the story is related by an ordinary, dysfunctional individual slowly coming apart as he questions growing up and contemporary life in America. Reading, I found myself drawn into the central character's life, the experiences described resonating as though my own. Life after god is a book that I thoroughly recommend and one which I shall dip into repeatedly.

more directed coupland
Anyone with a vague cerebral itch that their life is missing something should read this book. Anyone who feels that existence is a meaningless ritual of minutiae with an absence of narrative should seek it out and have Coupland once again have their suspicions confirmed.

Probably best not to do it on your own over Christmas and New Year though. Doesn't really put you in the party mood.

This is the third Coupland novel I've read (following Girlfriend in a Coma & Miss Wyoming). Once again Coupland proves his expertise at articulating the need for need that our generation occasionally suffers from. Told as sporadic journal entries and stream of conscious reminiscences, it makes its point more directly than the two later novels I read, but is maybe less memorable or enjoyable for eschewing narrative (though the absence of narrative in life is one of his main points).
Closure is once again however his weak point. Like Miss Wyoming and (especially) Girlfriend in a Coma, he ends with the vagaries of Easy Rider style escapism, where the 9-5 is rejected in order to just head off and, you know, do stuff. Just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead.
But then, by accurately portraying our questioning of how inconsequential work and life is, it's inevitable that he'll never be able to give us an answer.