JPod - Douglas Coupland

Vintage Canada (Random House), copyright 2006, printed 2007

Read: April 2010 (at age 32)

First time read

What to Expect:

This is a standalone book.  It’s a farce.  If you don’t like the absurd, then read a different book.

Suitable for more mature audiences – lots of casual sex and drug use, generally with no consequences.

My Reactions (spoilers!) after the break

Overall:

I think that expectations played a huge part in me being disappointed in this book.  I was expecting an updated Microserfs.  I got a book that seemed to be trying really hard to be Microserfs, from the cover to the random, stream-of-consciousness pages thrown in throughout, even to the “geeks working as programmers” setting.  JPod didn’t ever carry through.  Microserfs was a tight, character-driven coming of age book where you learned a lot about the main character’s thoughts and moods through the random pages inserted throughout the book.  JPod was a farce, where everything either borders on absurd or is well and truly smack dab in the middle of ridiculous.  It was funny, I guess, but there’s hardly a plot, and you don’t ever really get to know the characters.  Breakdown below. 

Rating: 3

Characters: 

Weak.  The characters didn’t grow, and you didn’t get to know them very well, as they were too busy dealing with the absurd to seem realistic.  They were pretty much cardboard cutouts to start with, and they didn’t ever really seem to be real people.  In a non-plot-driven story, this is a pretty major failing.   

The characters were:  the “hero” – the straight man - a nice guy, with a few geekish tendencies.  The love interest, who was a girl.  The office slut (female).  The other office slut (male), who was a cowboy fascinated with death.  The evil boss, who becomes a “nice guy” when he’s on heroin.  The guy who escaped from the lesbian commune and decided to become statistically normal.  And Mark.  Who’s a guy.  The other characters call him “evil” to try and give him some personality.  A pretty motley crew, and there is potential for growth, learning who they are beyond the first impressions, and such.  But they pretty much stay as cardboard cutouts throughout the book.

Premise:  

Ok – this *is* a Coupland book, and I've read a few.  The template is:  The hero starts in an unhappy place.  Things happen, and life’s good by the end of the book.  No surprises in this book.

Setting:  

Vancouver c. 2006.  It’s fine.  Not exciting, not dull.

 

Plot:

Plot?  What plot?  As far as I could tell, a bunch of random stuff happens to our viewpoint character, and then the book ends.

Readability:

Very readable, for the most part.  The writing is really quite good, and I enjoyed the style and the voice.  The sections where the author wrote himself into the book were very jarring and threw me completely out of the book.  They were also repeated, and dealt with a major plot point.  I didn't like these sections at all.  

The random pages had some interesting juxtapositions of ideas, but they didn’t help to advance the story, teach us about the characters, or even set the mood.  I’m not sure why they were there, other than to look like Microserfs.