According to Dutch author Martin Bril an author is either a storyteller or a stylist. The storyteller wants to tell you a story, so he knows where to begin and where and how the story will end. A stylist, on the other hand, is driven by the style, so he has no idea where it�ll all end.Clearly this is a very good and interesting idea: just imagine you waking up after such a big sleep and finding Abba replaced by The Chemical Brothers, CHiPs by The X-Files and having to get used to a world with AIDS and mobile phones, but without the Berlin Wall. I�m rewriting a story I wrote in 1995 and I found out how much the world has changed. Five years ago mobile phones were rare, as were people who used e-mail.
So it�s all the more sad that Girlfriend in a Coma can�t live up to those expectations. The book is not so interesting in the beginning, the first pages of the second part are dull and only halfway the third part the story gets interesting... only to fall flat on its face near the end. So a slow start, an interesting second part and a mostly tedious third chapter. It doesn�t look to be a fun read, yet Coupland is a talented storyteller, so where the story annoys you, the chosen words save Coupland. It�s a quick read and it could have been so much better.
Still the idea is so fascinating the book deserves a chance. If Coupland had done a better job, this would have been an amazing book. Now it�s only a quick read with good ideas.
Maybe that�s Coupland�s biggest problem: he never meant to be a writer (Generation X started as non-fiction) and sometimes you can tell. However, if his ideas do get translated into good prose, you get very good prose: Microserfs is the best proof of that.
More on Douglas Coupland can be found on his own extensive site: www.coupland.com. The pictures used on this page were found at a Coupland fan site.