Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11528 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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 semi-responsible 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.

Synopsis
Girls, memory, parenting, millennial fear -- all served Coupland-style. Karen, an attractive, popular student, goes into a coma one night in 1979. Whilst in it, she gives birth to a healthy baby daughter; once out of it, a mere eighteen years later, she finds herself, Rip van Winkle-like, a middle-aged mother whose friends have all gone through all the normal marital, social and political traumas and back again...This tragicomedy shows Coupland in his most mature form yet, writing with all his customary powers of acute observation, but turning his attention away from the surface of modern life to the dynamics of modern relationships, but doing so with all the sly wit and weird accuracy we expect of the soothsaying author of Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Life After God, Microserfs and Polaroids from the Dead.

Customer Reviews

A milestonenovel by a milestone author. Read it.
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian Author whose early 90's novel Generation X accidently defined a generation struggling to grow into adulthood. This late 90's novel may well be his best work to date (though personally it is a close call between this and his 2003 novel Hey Nostradamus).

Coupland takes a group of characters surrounded by pop culture references and global branding and sees them from their teens through to their thirties before forcing them to confront issues that they were always to busy to think about; love, death, family, enviromental destruction, the future and what exactly are we here for anyway? Most western readers born since the wars will recognise the world the characters live in and are equally to busy to confront these important issues. To this end the book often feels like a refreshing and some times desturbing critique of the readers own life expirence. Some reviewrs here suggest that this is ham fisted. But although the writing style is stark in places I found the story all the more shocking and immersive because of it.

The books takes it's name from a song title by seminal 80's guitar popsters The Smiths and their lyrics are liberally scattered through out the chapters. Spotting these is a real treat for any Morrissey or Smiths fan but never dominates the story and characters. Music journalists have often put the Smiths cross generational legacy down to their popularity with young people struggling with the transition into adulthood. The books appeal is very similair and it feels like an essential read for any one in their late teens to mid twenties.

Girlfirned in a Coma is an accssible, engrossing and easy read, the characters are great and the story is an excellent snap shot of the culture of it's time. But at the same time it deals with the most heavy weight issue since the enlightenment;

now that the West has got rid of God, how do we find lasting satisfaction?
And how do we approach the sticky subject of our inevitable deaths?

The book offers no answers. It feels as if it intends the reader, like the central characters, to go away and think seriously for themsevles. For this reason I believe it is a masterpiece.

Why are you here?

Depressing but true and brilliant.
This has to be Coupland's best work. The book is extremely depressing throughout.The loss of the best years of a young girls life. However when she wakes up the true story in the novel starts. She is amazed to discover just what the world has becomed. Coupland makes the closet possible to an Ailen's view of modern life on earth. The novel tries to show that we are wasting our lives. That we are chasing things that don't matter while the things that do slip away. Read this book. Enjoy it. Then change your life.

By Far The Best Book I Have Ever Read
To tell you the truth I brought this book because I liked the cover, and before reading it I had never heard of Douglas Coupland. So having never read anything from this genre before, I'm probably not best reviewer for this book. (In fact if anyone's still listening I'm touched.) Anyway the book. I was shocked to read Amazon.co.uk's review of the book. The plot is superb and ultra realistic up until the end, when it becomes totally surreal and a bit hard to swallow parts. The story line apart from the obvious 'girl goes into coma' bit, is basically about a group of friends, and how they deal with their best friend going into a coma. And once she wakes up how they deal with a very bizarre set of circumstances indeed. To cut long 'review', short (BOOM, BOOM) once I finished the book, my friend read it, my friends mum read it, my auntie read it, they are said it was FAB. So now my mum (who strictly Jane Austin) is reading it. So if that doesn't convince you that its pukerest book that ever was, then I don't what will. It is truly, truly great.(I aplogise in advance if your book sales go down amazon :)