Life After God [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Douglas Coupland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1994

A thought-provoking collection of stories explores the nature of spirituality in a fast-moving modern culture and its impact on human nature, beliefs, relationships, attitudes, hopes, fears, and dreams. By the author of Generation X.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Coupland's Generation X and Shampoo Planet explored the ennui of a generation of young adults, reared on a promiscuous diet of mass culture, who regard politics, sex, the job market, global events and religion with the same degree of ironic apathy. His new collection of stories offers variations on that same theme, a series of loosely connected, escapist adventures in which a 30-year-old narrator flees a middling job and hits the road in quest of authentic spiritual experience, reflecting with mixed nostalgia and despair upon past events, from his insular suburban upbringing to his recently dissolved marriage. In the opening story, "Little Creatures," the narrator, harassed by legal troubles and recriminating phone calls from his ex-wife, accompanies his young daughter on a car trip north from Vancouver into a primeval landscape enveloped in snow. After his car conks out in a desolate stretch of Nevada, the protagonist of "In the Desert" meets a wizened vagrant who feeds him cold fast-food before vanishing without a trace, leaving the narrator to muse about the transcendent value of "small acts of mercy." Like Generation X , the margins of which held snippets of data and other visual aids, Life After God is illustrated with childlike drawings of cute animals, appliances, barren landscapes, road signs and other symbols, a faux naif touch that underscores Coupland's fetish for lost innocence. Although these tales of escape from the taint of middle-class culture and technology occasionally do strike a note of real feeling, they succeed less as an allegory for a postmodern, post-ironic spiritual life than as an amusing travelogue for jaded, pop-culturally literate couch potatoes.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Coupland's novels (e.g., Shampoo Planet, LJ 8/92) appeal to young, confused, and disenfranchised waifs who like to characterize themselves as Generation X. This audiobook features two complete stories selected from the print version and read by the author. In "One Thousand Years," a young man flees to the wilderness in the wake of an existential crisis, while "Things That Fly" tells of lost love and the death of Superman. Coupland's endearing Canadian accent will be a welcome change to listeners accustomed to the usual Brit or Yank reader. Yet his monotone delivery, however appropriate to his characters' weary internal ramblings, is at times difficult to savor. For large popular collections.
Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Audioworks (March 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671887157
• ISBN-13: 978-0671887155
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,696,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lingering, February 25, 2003

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Life After God (Paperback)

I was only recent introduced to Douglas Coupland by a pal of mine who pestered me for months to try his books. Now I'm glad she did. "Life After God" has a somewhat experimental feel to the narrative, but it's a successful experiment if it is.

Coupland explores the concept: "You are the first generation raised without religion." Or more specifically, how human beings (all of which are born with a drive to believe in something -- religion, politics, art) respond to the material-driven world. Meditations on what separates humans from animals, imagining a nuclear explosion and how it would immediately impact the people who die in it, a philosophical bout with depression, and how people respond to their "lives after God."

Disregard the initially off-putting title of the book, because that title really doesn't reflect what the book is about. At the end of one short story, the narrator concludes, "My secret is that I need God." Not the way religious fanatic Dana does, which is more needy and superficial, but rather in a deep and primal way. And Coupland doesn't go overboard trying to explain it to the readers -- he just writes it and lets it sink in.

It has a slightly odd format; the pages are tiny, and the parts of each short story are more like connected vignettes, some only a few sentences long. And it's sprinkled with cute little drawings, like Coupland doodled on his manuscript. (Rain, boxes, computers, matches, and a parakeet with a key in its beak, among others) As in Coupland's other books, there is a sort of unhappy optimism to these stories, and Coupland's musings about how a lack of emphasized God has affected our ability to love and believe.

"Life After God" is not exactly an ordinary book. But it touches very well on hard-to-write-about topics and its messages lingered for a long time in my mind.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite depressing, but revelatory., September 9, 2006

By 

Jose Jones - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Life After God (Paperback)

"Life After God" is a genuinely morose, sad, melancholic collection of stories dealing with loneliness, isolation and unhappiness. Most of its characters are numbly horrified by where they find themselves in life.

The stories here deal with that in-between world of the childishness of youth and the maturity of adulthood -- and how the people existing in that world make the transition. Some simply take the step, while others -- the people here -- can't help but pause and reflect, to question it, to wonder if it's even sensible.

Coupland's premise seems to be that this young generation of the '90s, so deadened by irony, so empty and unfeeling, experience this crushing loneliness because they are without religion (which is something I don't agree with, since I side with Marx and think of religion as nothing more than an opiate).

Coupland does understand his characters, though, and as someone who's just a bit younger, I identified with them (even when I found them pretentious and dramatic). There are times when I felt like Coupland was stealing my thoughts. Showing me conversations I've had about the worries and insecurities in my life.

The greatest thing about "Life After God" are the staggering and utterly true thoughts Coupland drops here and there, which are so perfectly accurate, they leave you gut-punched.

I probably enjoyed the final two stories the least, and "In The Desert" the most, but "Life After God" is an excellent story collection that displays Coupland's considerable talent.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that really makes you think..., September 15, 2006

By 

Charity (Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life After God (Paperback)

This splendidly written book captivates the reader with compassion for the main character as he stumbles through the mistakes and beauty he has created in his life. The book follows the journey of a person who is trying to discover who he is in the midst of a fallen world, void spirituality and broken dreams. I'm a huge fan of the author, Douglas Coupland, and I feel that this is by far his best work. It will make you laugh, cry and ponder this crazy thing we call existence.