By: Douglas Coupland Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Bloomsbury USA Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 288 Publication Date: October 02, 2007 Release Date: October 02, 2007
The first and only story of love and looming apocalypse set in the aisles of an office supply superstore.
In Douglas Coupland’s ingenious new novel—sort of a Clerks meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf—we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged “aisles associate” at Staples, condemned to restocking reams of 20-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life. And Roger’s co-worker Bethany, in her early twenties and at the end of her Goth phase, who is looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in aisle 6. One day, Bethany discovers Roger’s notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy she’s never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her: and, spookily, he is getting her right. These two retail workers then strike up an extraordinary epistolary relationship. Watch as their lives unfold alongside Roger’s work-in-progress, the oddly titled Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong. Through a complex layering of narratives, The Gum Thief reveals the comedy, loneliness, and strange comforts of contemporary life. Coupland electrifies us on every page of this witty, wise, and unforgettable novel. Love, death and eternal friendship can all transpire where we least expect them …and even after tragedy seems to have wiped your human slate clean, stories can slowly rebuild you.
great! This novel is fun, sincere, well-paced, and somehow timeless, despite Coupland's love of tech pop culture references (youtube this time; the kids just love it).
Aging loser Roger has hit rock bottom: he's divorced, disappointed, and drinking through his days at Staples. He befriends drifting, frustrated goth chick Bethany, and together they mock their mediocre coworkers and support each other through several personal catastrophes. Roger is secretly writing a wonderfully terrible novel (where Coupland gets to play the book-within-a-book trick), which Bethany reads and encourages. And in the process they both discover they have made a sincere connection with another human being.
Many books in the trendy tech-age fiction genre focus on isolation despite technology, loneliness despite constant connectivity. Coupland has taken this theme and dropped it into a context that isn't savvy, sophisticated, or innovative at all. And yet it totally works: the result is that he has managed to distill this theme down into a few choice truths about the human condition. Wonderful!
typical Coupland fare Current. Original. I enjoyed the formatting of this novel. The point-of-view switches between Roger, Bethany, DeeDee and Roger's fictional writing 'Glove Pond". Roger is a middle aged man working at Staples and drinking away his sorrows. Brittany is a goth girl who also works at Staples and Brittany and Roger start sharing a relationship through written missives they leave for each other. This seemingly odd couple find that having someone to talk to and listening to is equally important. Clever and funny and touching. Another enjoyable novel by Coupland.
not his best, but still really good i love douglas coupland's work. i think i've read every one of his books (which is quite a long list at this point). this wasn't my favorite of his books, but i still completely enjoyed reading it.
the story unfolds through a series of first-person chapters written by the various characters in the story. primarily, this is a middle-aged semi-depressed guy who's working at staples and stuck in a miserable life of bad choices and waiting for something to happen. his young-20s goth-girl co-worker finds a journal entry he's written from her perspective, and is both intrigued and freaked by how accurately he's captured her; and she begins to write back. they develop a friendship of sorts through exchanged letters (while never acknowledging each other's existence in real life). she becomes a muse to him as he writes an extremely odd and quirky story about some drunk intellectuals (the chapters of this work-in-progress are also included).
ultimately, it's a story of a few people who are stuck, getting unstuck. it's about redemption, and about choosing how to respond to life.
Almost there... and then, nothing. I opened this book as a fan of Coupland's previous works, and was not disappointed. I could identify very much with Roger, even though I rarely drink and don't have an ex-wife or former bar flings. I wanted so much for his life to improve over the course of the book, and for Bethany as well.
And yet, their lives barely improved. Sure, he reconnected with someone from his past, at least by written letter, and Bethany stopped acting out through her wardrobe, but all she did was act out in other ways instead. At the end, the only character who seems to have benefited from the few hundred pages of reading was Roger, but that's speculative at best.
I finished the book eager to find out what happened to the characters next, not just because I grew attached to the characters, but because there was no sense of closure. Did Dee Dee and Roger continue to be friends? Hook up? Rekindle their past? Did Bethany make any changes to become "normal" without harming herself this time? Do they still write? Did Roger get a job, or stop drinking? Too many unanswered questions, and it is not usual for Coupland to write a book that begs for a sequel. Another review alluded that he ran out of ideas and finished on autopilot, and I suppose there's a lot of truth in that.
Still, it's worth the read. Just don't get your hopes up for a satisfying ending.
Definitely not what I was expecting Oh no, I thought when I was given this as a gift, some Gen X/Frazen kind of thing. But I had to admit the premise amused me and so I tried it. Glad I did. There is nothing in here that hasn't been said before, but trust me, its no retread. The characters and what they were going through were all real to me. There was no cutesey device (unless you consider the novel within a novel and I don't) to make us think the author is so very clever. And while I expected this to be a light and humorous book, it wasn't totally. There was humor in that 'irony of the world' sort of way, but there was also loss and regeneration. A quick read, but one thats still staying with me a while after I read it.
I've not read any of his other books. If some of his fans could let me know in the comment section which one I should try next, I'd greatly appreciate it.
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