Girlfriend In A Coma [Import] [Hardcover]

Douglas Coupland (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Regan Books/Harper-collins; 1St Edition edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0002257548
• ISBN-13: 978-0002257541
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (180 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,160,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dare to Think Deeply, August 11, 2002

By 

paisleymonsoon (Tulsa, Oklahoma) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Girlfriend in a Coma (Paperback)

A woman comes out of a coma after almost 20 years to discover that the world has changed for the worse and her friends have barely changed. All the newest inventions have left people with less and less time and made everyone shallower and shallower. She predicts that, 3 days after Christmas, the end of the world will come and only herself and her slacker friends will be left. The question is, can they learn from being the only people left in the world or will they continue to be slackers. I have never been swept into a book in such a way; I found my dreams getting tangled up in this book at night. But it's fitting, since it seems that much of the book takes place in the realm of dreams. I love the mandate given to the characters at the end of the book to go out and ask questions and make people think. Without asking questions about how we got to where we are, the purpose of it all, and where we are going, the world stagnates. The author touches on my own feeling that technology is actually causing many people to stagnate. You can tell this if you've ever been in an internet chat room and have tried to procure any intellectual conversation from anyone. Great book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars So close, and yet..., September 10, 2008

By 

This Guy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girlfriend in a Coma (Paperback)

I really, really wanted to like this book...and it came so close to winning me over. Unfortuantely, the last quarter of the book falls apart so quickly and so badly, that it ruins whatever good experience I had with the first three quarters.

The story is really interesting, and a quick read, throughout most of the book. Then, once the Supernatural Twist occurs, it just goes downhill. From there, Coupland spends FOREVER getting to the end, and he just rambles for several chapters until he gets to the letdown that is the ending. That letdown could've come about five chapters earlier, too, since one of the characters actually warns of it...again and again and again. "I've got something to tell these people", is what he essentially says, then spends five chapters getting around to saying it.

...And, when this "bombshell" is dropped, it's boring. Plenty of people on this site have given the ending away, so I won't do that. Suffice to say, it's simplistic, it's preachy, and it isn't remotely groundbreaking. In fact, it isn't even interesting. It's just pretentious, which is a shame because so much of the book was so interesting.

I really wanted to like this book, but it just spirals out of control near the end. It seemed thrown together, and ruined a book that would've easily gotten three or four stars from me had it not lost itself in the final act.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I find your lack of faith disturbing., January 19, 2007

By 

Jose Jones - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Girlfriend in a Coma (Paperback)

Having now read "Life After God," "Microserfs" and "Girlfriend in a Coma" back-to-back-to-back, it's obvious that Coupland had a mortal terror of the emptiness and faithlessness of the '90s culture. This is the scariest, creepiest and oddest display of that fear.

The novel starts off in the late '70s when 17-year-old Karen loses her virginity on a skiing trip to boyfriend Richard and soon falls into a coma. Richard already lost one young friend to cancer (a jock named Jared, who acts as our narrator in the beginning and end of the book) and his girlfriend's tragic disappearing act is something he never truly gets over. The first section of the book shows us Richard and his friends -- sarcastic Hamilton, model Pam, lonely Wendy, smart but aloof Linus -- numbly trek into adulthood. They battle addictions, they question life, they marry -- and they all end up back in their old Canadian neighborhood.

Karen awakes two decades later to a world she finds disturbing -- empty, mindless worker drones simply existing. No free time, no fun, no leisure. While technology has grown stronger, she feels like the world has become emotionally cold and disconnected.

The frail, emaciated Karen reenters the life of her friends -- she gets to meet her daughter for the first time (she was impregnated by Richard on that night) -- and she also has visions of a coming apocalypse.

The apocalypse eventually arrives. The world "goes to sleep" -- people around the world simply pass out and die wherever they are. The aftermath is a world gone quiet. Streets filled with rotting corpses. Animals running wild in the street. The stink of death everywhere. Coupland has never been better than when he describes the horror of this plague. I think it may be the best writing he's ever done.

The friends and Megan (Richard and Karen's daughter) are the last people left on earth. Like all humans, they adapt to their situation. They watch videos and eat canned food.

At this point the three sections are like references to Stephen King -- "The Body" (a.k.a. "Stand by Me"), "It," and "The Stand."

Then things get "It's a Wonderful Life" as Jared rejoins the picture.

But the book goes deeper than that. In fact, before Coupland brings on his metaphor for our lack of beliefs and emotional remoteness, his book is quite sharp and effective in rendering the lives of his characters. Unlike in his previous novel, "Microserfs," where I often found it hard to identify with his characters, here I felt like I knew each one intimately. Some of their more cliche drug and drinking addictions are the point. Sometimes we're so lonely or angry or bitter that we don't know what to do but go to the cliche of drinking and drugs.

As horrifyingly real as the apocalypse is -- you can practically smell it -- I think Coupland's judgement is a wee too harsh. I think too much faith is just as bad as no faith at all. And I think religion (which is Coupland's major concern, it would seem) can be used too much to cover the reality of your problems.

Maybe my reaction is a bit of a "I resemble that condemnation" defense, but I don't think Coupland had to take the novel so far off the tracks, and I'm not really crazy about where the whole thing ends up (though the tone of the last section -- which is loose and blase -- will have you laughing).

But all flaws aside, this is an original, entertaining and powerful novel from a very talented author.