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Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
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Girlfriend in a Coma

by Douglas Coupland

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2,064241,507 (3.57)11
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Showing 1-5 of 24 (next | show all)
Very disappointing ( )
  karav | Nov 20, 2009 |
I enjoyed this book, but was really disappointed by the ending. ( )
  emerald_rosepetals | Sep 23, 2009 |
A good book, completely ruined by the preachy and redundant final sequence. Maybe I'd be less harsh on this novel if it wasn't by the author of "Eleanor Rigby" and "Hey Nostradamus!", who can do so much better. ( )
  Sr_Moreno | Sep 6, 2009 |
The thing I love about Coupland’s books is that I I always feel they connect to all of the other things I am reading (yes all the spiritual christian stuff), because the way he writes integrates a lot of it. This book is no different.

The premise of the book is there are a group of teenagers being teenagers and amongst all the hoopla one night one of their friends goes into a drug induced coma. It is then determined that this girl (named Karen) has been in someway interacting with some 4th dimension (my words not Coupland’s) and has seen things that she was or wasn’t supposed to see. Either way she goes into a coma for 17 years while her friends grow up in age (years), but really never in maturity. When she awakes the world appears bizarre to her with all the new technological developments yet no real positive progress and as she wrestles with being a 17 year old in 34 year old body (yet not actually being any less mature than her friends in many ways).

At this point I am not going to spoil the book (but I kind of do later), because the twists are well done and bizarre too, but personally I appreciate Coupland’s movement in this area (as I always have) and believe the jumps the book makes are not that bizarre. I digress, but should say that there are a lot of holistic items I gained from the book that as Christians we should read and find appreciation for. The later stages of the book begin to bring some of the 4th dimension to light and as the characters interact with this dimension you begin to see and feel the realization that narcissism really engulfs the entire culture.

I am not sure if Coupland was trying to reveal a sense of the narcissistic culture (based in Vancouver no less) through this book, but my greatest appreciation of the book was how after the [spoiler] “disaster,” the characters are now sent to re-enter the world with a sense of truth to the way they have acted (and how they have treated the world) and to bring about its best, and put others first in all that they do. They were given a glimpse into the truth and then sent back into their world to spread this truth throughout.

I feel that as a Christian, Jesus has given us a glimpse of how heaven is to be on earth and we can choose to sit idly by, or act on that truth that we know. Girlfriend in a Coma gives a glimpse of a present day idleness and then gives hope to the reader (through the characters) that we can choose to live (love) differently.

I wonder how aware we are of our own narcissistic behaviours and how much we sit idly by when we know there is more to life than this… specifically presently! Jesus prayer was “Your Kingdom (reality) come, on earth as it is in Heaven.” How much of my life is bringing Heaven to Earth. ( )
1 vote urbanplanter | Aug 3, 2009 |
Coupland writes stories that are weird in the best possible sense. ( )
  katet | Feb 5, 2009 |
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I'm Jared, a ghost.
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Girlfriend in a Coma (novel)

Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0060987324, Paperback)

In this latest novel from the poet laureate of Gen X--who is himself now a dangerously mature 36--boy does indeed meet girl. The year is 1979, and the lovers get right down to business in a very Couplandian bit of plein air intercourse: "Karen and I deflowered each other atop Grouse Mountain, among the cedars beside a ski slope, atop crystal snow shards beneath penlight stars. It was a December night so cold and clear that the air felt like the air of the Moon--lung-burning; mentholated and pure; hint of ozone, zinc, ski wax, and Karen's strawberry shampoo." Are we in for an archetypal '80s romance, played out against a pop-cultural backdrop? Nope. Only hours after losing her virginity, Karen loses consciousness as well--for almost two decades. The narrator and his circle soldier on, making the slow progression from debauched Vancouver youths to semiresponsible adults. Several end up working on a television series that bears a suspicious resemblance to The X-Files (surely a self-referential wink on the author's part). And then ... Karen wakes up. Her astonishment--which suggests a 20th-century, substance-abusing Rip Van Winkle--dominates the second half of the novel, and gives Coupland free reign to muse about time, identity, and the meaning (if any) of the impending millennium. Alas, he also slaps a concluding apocalypse onto the novel. As sleeping sickness overwhelms the populace, the world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a universal yawn--which doesn't, fortunately, outweigh the sweetness, oddity, and ironic smarts of everything that has preceded it.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:22 -0400)

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