This prolific Canadian novelist is well known not only for his words but for his artistic ventures as well. I can't believe I've been ignoring his novels on my numerous trips to the bookstore. I'm glad I finally cave.While this book didn't necessarily wow me, I've grown to like his style of writing. Girlfriend in a Coma started out as an un-put-downable read; the ending, though, got a little out of whack for me. And I don't know why I'm surprised to be honest, since the synopsis already hinted on what was to happen after the girlfriend woke up. Surreal is a bit of an understatement to describe how it all played out. And then it got "preachy", convenient and just plain…weird.This book had a very interesting beginning: Karen (the girlfriend) had just given her virginity to her boyfriend on the same night that she goes into a coma. A combination of valium, a couple of sips of alcohol on an empty stomach did her in. The odd thing about it was that she seemed to have an inkling of what was to happen. She had visions and dreams of the future. Anyway, weeks after she fell asleep, the doctors found out she's pregnant. She carried the baby full-term and gave birth via C-section. Years go by; the world around her continued to revolve while the boyfriend never did move on. The whole time she was in a coma, Richard went about his business without really pursuing any real relationships. He reluctantly assumed the "father in the background" role to their daughter, had careers, became an alcoholic - seemingly biding his time until Karen wakes up.There is a multitude of characters here with stories of their own. But the main focus was about Karen and Richard. In the seventeen years that Karen was in a coma, she was like a background music in everybody's lives. Or like one of those ginormous elephant that followed them around. If there's one thing they all had in common (besides Karen, that is) was how unhappy they've all become. Their lives didn't turn out as great as they'd hoped.The second-half of the book dealt with sleeping beauty waking up. And this is when things got weird. Basically, her waking up became the catalyst for the apocalypse. Don't ask me how because to be honest, all the BS about the meaning of life is somehow related to Karen. People started dropping off the face of the earth, and I mean that literally. They all fall asleep - all except for Karen, Richard, Megan (daughter), and their friends. The longer I sit here and try to compose this review, the more I'm coming to realize how ridiculous the whole thing was. If I'd care enough to figure it all out, I'd have paid more attention to all the mumbo-jumbo about the meaning of life. It was a long narration that I read once and couldn't, for the life of me, remember.In any case, this book is something that you could probably read in one sitting.
This book started out well enough. The premise was interesting, and I enjoyed the characters, but the whole thing went off the rails in part three. I'd be okay accepting the bonkers third act if only the payoff wasn't so disappointing. It plays out like a bad episode of Star Trek TNG, where the holodeck malfunctions and sends everyone into medieval times, embarrassingly goofy hi jinx ensueing. For a book whose deus ex machina was for the characters to spend their lives asking blandly unspecific existential questions, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Sure, if you're going to write a novel with weird metaphysical stuff, it's best not to longer on the details and just confidently put the weirdness out there. I can suspend disbelief for all kinds of insane things, as long as it's internally consistent, and makes sense within the story. In this book, I felt like the parts that really drove the plot forward, like Jared's involvement with putting the gang through the end of the world, were flimsy and made no sense. At the same time it felt like Coupland really wanted it to make sense, and wanted to sell me on the technical details of how the system worked, but every time he got halfway through explaining it, he gave up and just said it's a mystery because it really doesn't make any sense. I think this story might have worked if he just embraced the fact that none of if makes any sense at all. From the beginning with Karen's letter, the ending is built up do be some sort of grand revelation, but ends up being a letdown. Near the end, they compare their situation to It's A Wonderful Life, but where George Bailey is put through a crisis and has to grow because of it, the gang here has all of their problems removed by ghost-power rather than having to actually overcome them. The first two thirds of the book focused on how they were all wasting their lives in one way or another, and how they felt like their lives had no meaning, so to have all of those things whisked away by Jared just felt anticlimactic. After that, and out of nowhere, the big mandate that they're given at the end, is to spend the rest of their lives asking questions. Vague quasi-philosophical questions, and to dismantle the "system". And that's the big reveal.
What do You think about Girlfriend In A Coma (1999)?
Karen is an ordinary girl in the shallow end of high school, with a questionable relationship with food and drugs but more or less well-adjusted. One day, she sees what appears to be a vision of the future and this is enough to sing her to sleep for 17 years. She emerges from her coma in 1997, but pretty soon there's panic on the streets as a mysterious pandemic wipes everyone out. Now it's just her, her high-school friends and the daughter she birthed while comatose. How will they survive?The b
—J.T. Wilson
It seems very strange that I've never read Douglas Copeland before... Maybe I did but I forgot? Anyway, I got this at the Brokelyn Book Swap last month and I can't pick it up without the Smiths song digging into my head, which is fine now but will probably get really old really fast.*** I unfortunately took like a two-week break from this book to read Bone, which is especially shitty because I was less than twenty pages from the end of Girlfriend in a Coma when I decided to do that. So n.b., books: if you are so uncompelling that I will start another book when I am literally within spitting distance of finishing you, we are probably not very good friends. This is another one of those books I feel bad for disliking; I kind of think this is considered a cult classic or something? And I know lots of smart people who like it, or him, anyway. For my part, I couldn't stop thinking of Brett Easton Ellis, that one book where all the twenty-somethings do a bunch of coke and fuck each other? Or maybe that's all of his books.Anyway, I wish I'd known to read this in high school, or early college, when this sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy and wide-eyed philosophical meandering would have probably appealed to me a lot more. At this point I am a cynical bitch with little time for this sort of self-involved frippery, I guess. Sorry, Doug.
—Oriana
This book started out with an intriguing premise: what would happen if a teenage girl fell into a coma, and then her boyfriend found out she was pregnant? If she was vegetative but steady, how would she affect the lives of her high school friends? It's well written, and everything's going along pretty well until BAM (spoiler) it turns into an apocalyptic "The Stand" type book right out of the blue. It might have been better had I known what to expect. That's a completely different kind of emotional drama than I was prepared for. I plan to go back and reread this book, this time understanding what's coming. I imagine I'll have an entirely different opinion the next time around.
—Brittany
