This book was forced on me back in my grade eleven English class. I remain bitter about having had to suffer through it to this day. Tyler is a completely unsympathetic protagonist, and his treatment of Anna-Louise makes it even more alarming that she even considers him worthy of her time. Her complete transformation from a free spirited hippie type to what she perceives as Tyler's ideal woman (thin and spandex wearing, apparently) simply to please Tyler infuriated me. Anna-Louise was my favourite character, but Coupland felt the need to diminish her independence and make her completely give up her unique personality for the sake of the man in her life. This alone would have made me drop the book down a star, but since I was already hating the reading experience, this just solidified the one-star ranking in my mind.

Tyler sueña con ser millonario. Aprovechar su juventud y divertirse. Aspirar a la vida del hombre moderno: conseguir dinero, divertirse y dejar a un lado la trascendencia. Sus amigos, al igual que él, siguen el mismo patrón. Amistades y amores fugaces como el agua entre las manos. No hay nada sólido, "el amor de tu vida" te dejará por un ricachón. El amor verdadero se convertira en una amistad que durará lo necesario. Obtendrás lo que deseas, serás rico y famoso. El sueño de la juventud que aspira a una vida como la de los demás.

El autor hace una crítica de la juventud en este libro. El shampú y otros productos para el cuidado del cabello pasan inadvertidos pero nos dan una idea de la intrascendencia moderna: la apariencia lo es todo. Un libro aceptable.

After JPod, Gum Thief and Gen X, this one was a bit anti-climatice, only because I felt the multitude of beautiful sentences took away from the overall story. Very poetic yet at the same time could have been grittier, if that makes sense. Didn't shy me away from reading Girlfriend in A Coma.

Snarky and funny.
I'm a Coupland fan.
see http://thebooksmithblog.wordpress.com

Leuk, licht.

* * * 1/2

A pretty interesting story. The narrator's voice was kind of grating in the beginning with his referring to his mother, Jasmine, by her first name, which always seems kind of impolite to me (I would never call my mum by her first name). However, once the story settled down and crazy things started happening, it was less jarring.

The events themselves are classic Coupland, and the story is peppered with observations about the corporation-saturated life of the 1990s, clashes of cultures, journeys to find oneself, and so on. And Coupland's writing is always very evocative. It's all in the details: the colours of crayons Tyler uses to make rubbings of stars on the Walk of Fame; the consistency of KittyWhip Cat Food; Tyler's brother's drawing of the Plants; the way Tyler's birthplace looks in the middle of the forest. And if you're not a fan of the Coupland gimmicks, like the pages of numbers in jPod or the subconscious words in Microserfs, you will be relieved to note that this story is told in a fairly straightforward manner. (Personally, I have nothing against those gimmicks, but they may drive some people up the wall.) It's worth a look.

I found it very difficult to relate to the protagonist of this, Coupland's second novel. He leaves his dying town in the desert region of Washington State for a summer of rail travel round Europe and cheats on his girlfriend. He returns to Terminaldeclineville (I fail to remember the name Coupland actually uses) and pretends nothing happened. He bemoans the lack of ambition of just about everybody but drops out of college.

When Coupland talks about the USA I recognise the place. In this book he describes a Europe I've never been to, despite living in Brussels.

Coupland writes in the first person most of the time but his unique imagery, ubiquitous in his novels, makes this character seem like a clone of one of his other characters that suffered a lot of gene damage and didn't come out as a Asperger's Syndrome experiencing computer geek border-line genius - instead as a hotel manager wannabe!

So the protagonist is dull, dim, immoral and drifting through life - then the French Girl arrives. She's so unpleasant even our protagonist doesn't deserve her, but she takes charge of his life, until an unbelievable ending resolves matters. (Think fairy God-mother.)

For me this book was a complete failure, which was unexpected - I've read five other Coupland novels and always got something worthwhile out of them.

4.75/5

I was looking for something totally different than what I usually read, and found it!

Coupland writes for the generation before mine, his stories full of witticisms that seem dry now that they're over a decade old. I think the generational gap was too close for my comfort - the things that were ironic and sarcastically funny are now too true, imbedded deeply into the fabric of our national consciousness/experience. This makes them not funny anymore, but rather tragic and frightening. It was a little like looking into a crystal ball and seeing EXACTLY where things went wrong (although I know they went wrong long, long before now...).

Not to say that it wasn't a good book, just... disturbing. I think I definitely got something far different out of it than someone of generation X would have gotten (or for that matter, a baby boomer or anyone else). I like that in a book - it's exciting.

Also, sometimes the product placement was a bit much, even though I know it was *supposed* to be that way.

On the whole this just didn't do much for me. I appreciated the book more as the plot began to develop and thought there were some interesting aphorisms here and there, but the overall style of writing came across as off-putting. I read this hoping I would get something close to an interesting critique of consumerism or the evolution of our relationship with corporations, a richer appreciation for American culture or a new perspective, or at least some connection or affinity with the protagonist's post-university coming of age story but thought the book came up short on all three.

When I was like 18 and had no life experience I thought this book paled in comparison to Coupland’s previous book Generation X. But now I think Shampoo Planet is the superior book because it understands that having a low-income service job just sucks and is not romantic or liberating in any way. Don’t know exactly what happened to Coupland in between writing these two books but I’m glad. He needed to learn.

Coupland's second novel and the first I read by him, it still sticks in mind as probably the best book I've ever read.Its basically summed up as just another teen novel plotwise. Its everyday formalities, family, friends ,girlfriend(s), but looked at in Tyler Johnson's skewed perspective. It deals with the simple issues such as what haircare product to choose and more difficult ones such as trying to find an identity in the modern world. Like all of couplands work it explores the good and bad side of living in the modern consumerist world. And its shit funny. To me it captures, better than anything (Yes, Catcher in the Rye included) what it is to be a teen. A very easy read, light language, short, but still breathtaking. Give it a go, I can't see who couldn't get a kick out of it.