31 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
As entertaining as it is, it feels a little too familiar, November 8, 2009
I'm a fan of Douglas Coupland, whose writing in many ways reminds of Kurt Vonnegut (an author that I think Coupland has an affinity for - in fact the book's title is derived from a Vonnegut quote). Unlike Vonnegut though, Coupland has not yet (in my humble opinion) delivered a novel anywhere near the calibre of Slaughter-House Five or Cat's Cradle.
As entertaining as Generation A is on many levels, it feels too familiar. Coupland has the potential to write something truly extrodinary but it seems to me that he only provides us with glimpses of brilliance, unable to grow beyond what he has already shown us he can do. Generation A feels like a blending of Generation X and Girlfriend in a Coma.
Generation A is set in the near future. A future without bees (they suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the planet and along with them, the flowers and fruit that they pollinate). Then, in the course of a few short months, five `20-somethings' in different parts of the world are stung. The five young people become instant celebrities and are whisked off for scientific study. The bees are symptomatic of the health of the planet and the occurrence of these bee stings sends a message of hope to the world.
The story is told from the rotating points of view of the five young people: A corn farmer and artist of sorts who makes extra cash by filming himself naked from his tractor to internet subscribers, a young woman in New Zealand who uses the internet to make "earth sandwiches" with cyber friends on the other side of the world, a French student obsessed with `World of Warcraft' just coming off 114 days of consecutive play, a fundamentalist Christian with Tourette's syndrome, and a customer service call center rep from Sri Lanka.
The five young people are characterized by an alienation or purposelessness in their lives. They have no real meaningful relationships and `connect' with their world through technology (webcams, email, videogames, social networking `friends', websites, and blogs) or, in the case of one character, religion. Unlike most of the world around them though they have no interest in taking a new drug that is becoming popular around the world. The drug eliminates anxiety that people have about the future, causing them to think only of the present and to feel internally fulfilled without the need for any human interaction. The drug is like a solitary escape from reality, much like the feeling you might get when lost in a good book, but multiplied.
Coupland is an astute observer and his writing is filled with remarkable insight and clever, often hilarious pop culture references. Zack, the Iowa farm boy writes: "When I was growing up, Mother Nature was this reasonably hot woman who looked a lot like the actress Glenn Close wearing a pale blue nightie. When you weren't looking, she was dancing around the fields and the barns and the yard, patting the squirrels and French kissing butterflies. After the bees left and the plants started failing, it was like she'd returned from a Mossad boot camp with a shaved head, steel-trap abs and commando boots and man, was she pissed."
Where the novel falters a little is in its lack of subtlety regarding its themes. There are few connections that the reader has to make for himself as the characters speak openly and plainly about the central themes of the novel. This comes across as a little preachy at times, or at the very least, it makes me feel as if the author doesn't respect the readers ability to `get it' without spelling it out over and over again. Coupland's characters, as in previous novels, are hyper-aware of themselves and life's grander themes. We may be connected in a digital world but it also isolates us. Digital communication (and religion) is a poor substitute for real, meaningful human interaction. By sharing our stories with one another we can reconnect.
Coupland's novels tend to alternate between the reasonably normal (real people in the real world having real experiences - like Microserfs) and more speculative fiction (where things can get a little bizarre and surreal - like Girlfriend in a Coma). Some people might read a novel like Generation A expecting it to be "normal" only to become increasingly perplexed when it departs from conventional reality.
The bottom line: this is an imaginative and inventive novel. Like all of Coupland's novels, even when they fall a little short, it's a remarkably entertaining read. The novel is filled with a number of stories within stories, and one of them, the tale of Superman and the Kryptonite Martinis, is worth the price of admission alone. I can't help but feel that Coupland came up a little short in the end (again) but maybe I'm just expecting too much from him.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What's the buzz?, December 16, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I can't say that I've loved every word Douglas Coupland's ever written, but by and large I enjoy his work quite a lot. His novels are observant, quirky, and very funny. So, I was looking forward to Generation A. And I enjoyed reading it, but I wanted to like it so much more than I did. I think my biggest problem is that I felt like I was reading two different books. The first half of this novel did not seem to match up with the second.
The novel is primarily told from the points of view of five individuals from five different lifestyles and countries. What bonds them is that they all share an extraordinary experience. They are each stung by a bee--at a time (roughly the year 2024) when no one's seen a bee for five or six years. They've long been assumed extinct, and the world suffers for it. Fruits and flowers are incredibly rare, and must be labor-intensively hand pollinated. Honey is like gold. The bees are essentially the canaries in our coal mine, and the future isn't looking too bright.
This is so much an issue, that there's a new, hyper-addictive drug on the market called Solon. It keeps users in the present, instead of all that pesky worrying about the future. It also makes time pass quicker and helps alleviate loneliness, so that users can "live active and productive single lives with no fear or anxiety." So, it is in this near future that Zack from Iowa, Samantha from New Zealand, Julien from Paris, Harj from Sri Lanka, and Diana from Canada become instant worldwide celebrities--and subjects of scientific scrutiny.
And I was really engaged in this somewhat bizarre story. I was totally digging it! But as things moved forward, the plot veered off into left field. For reasons I won't get into, the B5 (as they are called) spend the second half of the novel telling each other quirky stories they've made up. Very little happens as a series of sometimes charming short stories are recited, and the ideas behind Coupland's satire are driven home.
Eventually there are revelations that somewhat tie the two halves of the novel together, but I found the ending to be weird and somewhat grotesque. There were definitely pleasures to be had in the reading of this novel. Coupland's just too darn good for that not to be the case, but Generation A never quite came together as a cohesive work.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
How cleverness falls flat...., March 21, 2010
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I couldn't help keep thinking of the movie "The Happening" as I was reading this novel. Both have fairly similar themes - "disjoint people connected by a rare super-natural event". well, that has been a plot for more than a few movies or books... The novelty factor of the bees (the supernatural connection in this story) wears off quickly, drowned in the dry humor and eerily similar narratives and narration styles by characters who are supposedly very different. That was disappointing considering how engaging the beginning of the novel was. The major plot of the novel(mentioned in other reviews) is quite successful in painting a futuristic landscape without having to make significant leaps of faith. But somewhere along the way in attempting to provide different narratives for the protagonists, the plot goes off in tangential directions (so many of them, that the author finally is forced to rush into a conclusion - maybe the editor was counting pages). Overall, an OK read.
(Perhaps, I am missing something as a first time Coupland reader - but this book doesn't make me want to revise my favorite authors list)
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