it's written in such a simple format and seemingly limited choice of words, not entirely about loneliness at all, and yet it made me remember just how cripplingly lonely i am and in a dramatic contrast, how beautiful it is to be.

I read this in a philosophy class and it really moved me. The characters are broken people who discover the consequences to lifestyles and patterns and where the paths end. It made me think, smile, and tear (a lil')...you gotta love that!

Unreadable, faux-philosophy gives me migraine. I usually like Douglas Coupland O.K. but Douglas Coupland isn't usually this whiney and half-assed. He deals with his usual themes, as far as I can tell, but these aimless vignettes really go nowhere slooooowly. I wouldn't recommend this even if it was a free zine my drug buddy did (and that is how it reads).

I've read this book, or portions of it, dozens of times. I will put it into my bag and carry it around for weeks, just opening it and reading something at random. Then I'll put it away until the next time I think of it. (Just FYI, I have read it straight through, also.) It's a unique book that, I think, even more than Generation X or Microserfs, is the essence of what I love about Douglas Coupland's writing.

there are illustrations, the stories are about 10 lines each and it's an awfully cute bathroom book. they won't even realize they're reading until it's over and then you can point at them and laugh that they stuck it out accidentally when they can't even get through an important, succinct and oft incidentally adorable email you shot them earlier in the week. aww.

I enjoyed the first section of the book and some of the flashback chapters. It was a rambling read and I found because the book is so small that turning the page every minute was annoying (minor problem but still annoying!).

I feel like Coupland forgot that the start of the story had Scout on a journey up north with his daughter. The first section ended with flashbacks telling the story but never came back to end that journey, instead he ends up in a tent (alone) on Vancouver Island?

Maybe Goodreads needs a "re-read" button, because this is one of those books I have to pull off the shelf every couple of years and give a quick read through. ...and it IS a 'quick' read through. I wonder if the word count on this thing is even high enough to call it a 'novella' ...but the truth is Mr. Coupland packs more than a few gut-punches to this old Gen-Xer's solar plexus in this slim volume. Sweetly mournful prose for a sweetly mournful (accelerated) generation.

It's just so obviously written by a man. A keener. Philosophy can't be forced, man, and it's not as aesthetic as you think it is to write in the second person. It's weird.

A re-read 15 or more years later...

I don't think Life After God hit me as much this time around as the first. But then it did. And then it didn't.

Ultimately, I don't think Douglas Coupland is trying to say Something. It is not meant to be a revelation. It's meant to be an acknowledgment of imperfect life. DC's idiosyncratic use of pop culture is perfect here, because it plants an experience. Even in all of its sparseness, Life After God says so much because it is riddled with environmental anchors and struggle to reconcile lives that don't play out like the world tells us they will.

so sweet and honest and realistic and open minded. it made me want to read more and write more, because i recognized myself in the book and all the people i love and the same memories- the same feelings- very much like the way im experiencing the world. very concise too- i hate waste of time bull shit.

Deeply moving, and impressively depressing. In the end you're honestly left thinking about your own life and beliefs.

Very interesting read.

"Now: I believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in the eleventh grade. You know what I mean." (Coupland, Douglas, p. 48, Life After God.)

My favorite passage. Nuff said. (I don't remember the correct format for citing a quote, because my memory cup already runneth over...)