Generation A – Douglas Coupland

Random House Canada, 2009, 297 pages

ISBN: 978-0-307-35772-4

Read: January 2011 (at age 32)

First time read

What this book is:

Generation A is a standalone work of near-future, post-apocalyptic fiction.  It’s kind of science fiction, but the science bits are pretty much glossed over.

From the back cover:

In the near future are believed to be extinct – until one autumn when five people are stung in different places around the world.  This shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined.

Generation A mirrors 1991’s Generation X.  It explores new ways of looking at the acts of reading and storytelling in a digital world.

My comments:  (spoilers ahoy!)

Overall: 

The book was really intriguing, especially at the beginning when I wanted to know more and more about the people and the setting.  Later in the book, when stories were used to show the characters growing more alike, I didn’t find it nearly so compelling.  And then the end was just bad.

Rating: 3

Characters: 

There were five main characters, and then a few supporting ones, including the “bad guy.” 

Zack - the good looking playboy rich kid

Diana – the devout Christian dental hygenist with Tourette’s

Samantha - The New Zealander yoga instructor

Harj - The Sri Lankan call-center worker – excited, a bit naïve, and very bright.

Julien – the immature French gamer kid.

And that’s pretty much it.  The characters were painted with pretty broad strokes, and weren’t really realistic, didn’t talk like people, but they worked anyway.  I think it has something to do with reacting like people, even if they didn’t talk like them.

Premise:

Five people get stung by bees, and this causes them to explode onto the global consciousness, and they somehow end up on a remote island in British Columbia telling stories to each other.  Surprisingly, it works, just about until the end.

Setting:

Near-future earth, where insect pollinators have pretty much disappeared, – hand pollination means that things like apples are very expensive, and things that don’t need pollination (potatoes) are cheap – and there’s a fuel shortage.  Technology still works fine, though, and the wired world plays a big part of the storyline.  The setting seems well thought out and consistent.

Plot:

There was one, which is somewhat unusual for a Coupland novel.  There was a mystery (why did the bees come back) for the characters to riddle out.  There was a bad guy.  The events of the book were significant.  There was an ending of a sort, but it was very unsatisfying.  The world had some interesting ideas – what would happen if there were no pollinators?  Oh, and there’s a fuel shortage.  Electronics are pretty much OK, though, so we get to show some use of technology.  There was some thought put into it, and I mostly bought the world, (and perhaps this is just my expectation from my science-fiction background) but when there’s something odd about the world, I want to know about it a bit.  Why exactly did the bees go? Why did they come back?  Why did stinging 5 particular people mean that they become a shared consciousness?  All this stuff just kind of happened, and it was never explained.  The bees left because somebody started brewing a drug.  That’s it.  How?  Why does that work?  Why would the bees leaving (it seemed to be a conscious choice on the part of the bees) mean that the moths, butterflies, and all the other pollinators leave too?  Other than ‘something to do with a drug’, we never found out why the bees left, let alone any of the rest of it.  The lack of setting resolution in the story was the plot's biggest weakness.

One thing I liked about the book:

I liked that I felt I knew the characters, in an odd way.  They didn’t talk like people I know, and they certainly weren’t like people I know, but somehow they worked.  Maybe it’s that they talked as if they had the time to put their thoughts in order, and then convey them in paragraphs.  I never doubted that the thoughts were real.

One thing I didn’t like about the book:

I really didn’t like that the ending to the book left so many questions unanswered.  I suspect that it’s to do with the unfinished nature of the generation that the book is trying to describe, but I still didn’t like it.

Readability:

It was a very readable book.  Much more than the last few Couplands that I’ve read, this one had a plot arc as well as character arcs to keep me reading.

Other opinions:

Book Addiction - liked it a bit better than I did. 

Den of Geek - doesn't say too much.  Liked it.

T.O. Snob’s Music - pretty brief.  Didn't like it.

IO9 - Detailed, but not much of a point.  They liked the writing.

The Cult - Liked it

Presenting Lenore - Kinda like me - found it unsatisfying.

Etc., etc.