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Loading... Generation A (original 2009; edition 2009)by Douglas Coupland
Work detailsGeneration A: A Novel by Douglas Coupland (2009)
Bees are extinct. Five people from around the world get stung by "extinct" bees and are promptly placed under sterile watch so scientists can figure out why the bees stung them. What makes them different? Once released, the five meet under "scientific" supervision and tell stories... (  ) bookwormteri | Apr 17, 2013 |  Stronger start than any other Douglas Coupland novel I've read but a classic Coupland finish. Interesting ideas about life without bees. (  ) JenMDB | Apr 9, 2013 | He really should have got a New Zealander to read over Sam's chapters. I mean, "Wanganui province?" Who even says that? (  ) whitsunweddings | Nov 9, 2012 | I have read most of Coupland book and this was the most disorienting. In some of his books the characters are almost anonymous puppets whose mixed actions and stories will end up describing a realistic but very humorous picture of the 'human condition', a la Vonnegut. In others of his books the strategy is inverted and there are fragmented anonymous stories that will together give a vivid description of the characters and their most inner pains. But the A generation has its birth in a moment of history when human kind has lost the capability of living stories. So, Coupland has to adopt a stratagem in order to story-tell the generation of humans with non stories and the uncertainty in their future. The stratagem is an injection of fantasy / science fiction that goes a bit out of control and will leave the readers a bit confused at the end. ( ) benedetto.fiorelli | Oct 20, 2012 | Allibaba77 | May 30, 2012 |
 Still, the plot of Generation A, which in another writer’s hands might gallop into geopolitical-thriller territory, plays harmony to trademark Couplandian insight: As Diana is taken away from her house, now covered in an isolation bubble, she says “For the first time in my life, the future felt futuristic”; for Julien, the sting took away a life “like a video game that resets to zero every time I wake up.” It’s in these details, not the overall picture, that readers will find the generation of which Vonnegut spoke, though as with Coupland’s Generation X, it isn’t a complete portrait. An initially puzzling backdrop gives the narrative just enough momentum to nose these characters into a place where they can explore how much they have in common. If Generation X gave us “tales for an accelerated culture,” then Generation A is its natural extension, offering tales for the information overloaded. The bite-sized chapters and witty tone will appeal to those with perpetual attention defi cits, and bits of pop culture sprinkled liberally throughout will attract readers highly attuned to the current zeitgeist. Coupland clearly understands the minds of the current generation – young people who have never known a time without the Internet – and plays on their desire to jump continually from one subject to the next.  Generation A feels like a slow-motion demonstration of the ways in which technology is destroying story, and not the enacted triumph of story over technology that Coupland so clearly wishes it to be.
References to this work on external resources.
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