Reviewed by: Kris

Written by: Douglas Coupland

Titled: Miss Wyoming

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I have been intrigued by the thought of Douglas Coupland for a while. I’ve only read one other book by him; that being Generation X. I really enjoyed reading that one, mainly because it was unlike most things I’ve read before. It was written in an interesting style and I always like reading things written in an unorthodox way. I have been told by many people that they feel Miss Wyoming is Coupland’s best work thus far. I guess I can’t really comment on that since I’ve only read one other thing by him and I liked that one better than Miss Wyoming.

Don’t get me wrong, Miss Wyoming is a good story. I just happen to like Generation X a bit better. Miss Wyoming isn’t like Generation X; Generation X is written in a linear way and it’s almost a collection of short stories in one big story. Miss Wyoming is one story written in a nonlinear way. When I say nonlinear, I am referring to the timeline. Coupland plays with the timeline in Miss Wyoming and most chapters are occurring at different times and places than the previous one. This made the story slightly confusing when I wasn’t paying a lot of attention.

The story starts out very slowly; in fact, it started out almost too slow for me because I almost decided to put it down and stop reading it. The story gets much better after the first chapter, so I recommend that if you do start reading it that you don’t get too discouraged if you are almost bored by the first chapter. It really starts to pick up a few chapters in, and you will be drawn in at how simple and yet complex the story can be. There are a lot of details that you won’t find out until you are near the end, and then you realize the real turmoil that the Susan, John, Marilyn and the rest of the characters have been going through.

This is a well told story once you get used to the timeline skipping around. A lot of odd things happen to the characters, which makes it so you aren’t really able to relate to the characters a lot. I wish that Susan and John would have been more real, but I suppose they couldn’t be very real since they were both actors. That was the main flaw I saw in this book; I wanted to relate to the characters, but they are supposed to be actors so there isn’t a way to relate to them since I can’t understand what’s happening to them.

All in all, this is a good read. Quite sad at times and happy at others, which gives the entire book balance. If you’re bored, I would recommend this book. It’s a fairly quick read and it might make you look at some actors a bit differently after reading it.