:: Oh, Look, A Tumbleweed ::

:: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 ::

GIRLDFRIEND IN A COMA ***
By Douglas Coupland
-All I can really say about this book is how difficult it is to get through. It is heavy, dark, depressing and, strangely, moving. It is Douglas Coupland's first attempt (And, I'm somewhat thankful, his only) at supernatural and paranormal experiences...and he does succeed, but he drenches the final half of this novel with messages for the future.
I liked the book, don't get me wrong, and his attempts at the supernatural are actually very good, and truly suspensful...but it's so heavy that by the end of the book I wanted to put a gun to my head and end my life right then and there. This book will depress you for a week, I swear. Also gone is Coupland's dark and ironic humor that has made his best books (Microserfs, Shampoo Planet, Life After God) so incredibly fantastic. It's not a drawback, but it increases the seriousness of the situations, and the book gets another layer of depression. Also, this is Coupland's first novel where he does not try to write about twentysomethings...he tackles adults, and, in some ways, succeeds more than with the younger crowd.
In any case...it is also difficult to review this novel because it is two novels in one, and that is exactly what is wrong with it. The first half focuses on the lives of five people (Richard, Hamilton, Pam, Linus, Wendy) as they deal with the issues surrounding their friend (Karen) who plunges into a coma after she and Richard have sex. Nine months into the coma, Karen gives birth to Megan, Richard's child. The novel shows how their lives change and how they deal with the coma; Everyone but Linus and Wendy starts taking heavy drugs, Richard becomes a drunk, Linus doesn't know what to do with his life, Wendy becomes a nurse, and Megan becomes the most rebellious teenager ever.
Now comes part two: When Karen awakes, after 17 years, she says that in the coma, she saw visions of darkness, people asleep. After Pam and Hamilton overdose on heroin, they say that they saw buring fields, floods, etc. Then, one day, people start falling asleep. Around the world people just die. Drop dead and die. This happens until only the six friends and Megan and Megan's daughter, Jane, remain. They live on this barren world until their friend from high school, Jared, who died of leukemia, tells them how to go back to the old world.
See, this is what I didn't like: When Jared comes into the picture, his reasons for why the eight of them remain are so unbelievably fuzzy and I don't really remember why. To teach them a lesson, I think. And then, once back to the real world, they have to go around making sure people question the existance of humans, and if they don't do this, they come right back here.
But it's fuzzy. Are these those people you dismiss as freaks on the corner holding up the signs saying the end is near? Hmm? The book pretty much falters when it starts to get supernatural, and Coupland really can't pull off this twist. If the subject of the book had beem completely about Karen's coma, he could have kept his witty humor and Zeitgist beliefs in there and it could have been one of his best. Instead, he drops all humor and writes his most depressing novel yet (Which is saying something considering Life After God was so damn depressing) and it just doesn't work. Not for Coupland. This isn't his style, and he wisely stayed away from it, writing about families in his next two novels.
Something I've kind of found out is that in most novels (Not in mine) the main character is a direct reflection of the author. Coupland takes an almost insane risk and makes the novel mostly first person (Richard) when the person who Coupland is a reflection of is Karen. Coupland shows us that he is scared of what the future has to bring and what is in store for mankind. Doug, I have to say, after reading this novel, I am too.

:: Nick Wednesday, July 02, 2003 [+] ::