I thought this book would of been better. There were a few stories I loved and they really touched me personally, but the ending was one I did not see coming and I didn't really like it..... Maybe I'm wrong but this is definitely not a book I'd be adamant on recommending or reading for a second time.

3.5

Life After God is a collection of short stories written in blocks of 2 or 3 paragraphs per page, large font, with a single child-like illustration accompanying it.

The stories are plotless and meandering. One concerns a man in a hotel talking with his neighbours and then setting free some goldfish into a reservoir. Another features a mother who has left her husband and is talking to the child about her plans for their future and their present journey; another features aimless thirty-somethings, unhappy with who they became, wondering what to do, trying to change, etc.

I'll say that the final story above hooked me. I've had similar conversations with friends I was close with who I've met at a wedding of a mutual friend or who I've met up with at a bar for a drink, and we've talked about who we were, who we are, and where we hope we're going. It's called Growing Up (he says, not at all condescendingly). The overall message seems to be "life isn't what I thought it would be" and I get that, I think we all feel that at times. But as a book? It becomes quite tedious to read over and over.

Coupland's written about the vapidity of modern life, the contemporary individual and the human condition exceptionally well, better than many writers around now, and he’s easily the equal of classic writers who’ve also done this in the past. Life After God though is a misfire. It's got the ideas and the scenes of his other books, Eleanor Rigby and Generation A, minus the humour and plot. As such, it's one of his least interesting works and at best feels like a self-indulgent experiment or a half drunk conversation with someone you vaguely liked once.

This book meandered, and I think Coupland was attempting to tackle some big issues here, but it just didn't work for me. The section describing the nuclear meltdown scenarios was overlong, and in the end the book just didn't gel. It also felt too much like a memoir to call it a novel, but I guess the names were changed to protect the innocent, or something like that.

wow, one of the few Douglas Coupland novels I haven't read.
If i can't join atomic books cult book reading club, I'll just read em all myself: http://www.atomicbooks.com/43/public_...

I had no idea what to think of this book at first. The more i read the harder it was to put it down. I had no idea where Douglas was going with his story and I was wondering what he meant by the title "Life After God". As a Christian i was skeptical and only started reading the book because my boyfriend asked me to. It is the only book that made me want to cry when i finished it as well as jump into a clean river (you'll understand if you read it). I loved it and i will read it again.

Eight short stories with a general theme running through them all - the lives of a generation that grew up with a lot of religion but live in a world where they (told in the first person) explore their faith in a faithless world, or at least a world less religious than the one they grew up in. As a part of this the stories feel existentialist as well, and I found them quite original in feel and thought provoking, as in many cases they looked at the minutiae of life and then transposed that to the wider world. An interesting read trying a bit too hard to mean something - 7 out of 12, Three Stars

Eight shorts told via a male narrator - 'Little Creatures': is a road trip where the narrator mostly compares animals existence to humans - 9 out of 12. 'My Hotel Year': a minimalist tale of a year in hotel told via the experiences the narrator has with other residents - 7 out of 12. 'Things That Fly': sees the narrator taking an existential look at the world on returning (to his parents) home after a relationship break-up 6/12; 'The Wrong Sun': lifelong impact of growing up in world in nuclear stalemate in the 1950s. 6/12; 'Gettysburg': a separating from his wife husband gives a personal narration to his child about what he learned about life starting and ending with visits to Gettysburg 5/12. 'In The Desert': the narrator recalls how and when he got left walking a desert under moonlight and what he learned from his journey 7/12. 'Patty Hearst': in which the narrator estranged from his sister recounts growing up with her and seeking her out now - 6/12. 'Life After God': in which the narrator in a tux in a tent(!) in the wilderness looks back on his young adult friend group, how they developed over the years, and also himself and what, if anything, was/is missing. 7/12.

2023 read

At first I liked the format of this book, a page or two at a time, little snapshots of memory or imagination. It felt real, like the way a mind truly thinks.

About 20 pages in it all went to shit.

The author sounds like he's trying so hard to be profound and edgy, but it's just boring nonsense. A few good quotables, but otherwise nothing. It's flat, impersonal, empty, and if it hadn't been so simply written it would have turned unbearable. I don't know how anyone gets a thing from this.

And the end conversion was bullshit.

No matter how much I try, I think I'm just not a Douglas Coupland fan. I always feel like I should give him "one more chance" since I know so many people who really love his books, but it seems I'm always disappointed. I spent the past couple of days reading Life After God on the train, and yet again, it just didn't do anything for me.

I feel like Coupland's books have all the shape of being intellectual or philosophical without any of the substance. He acts like he's going to say something big but rarely ends up saying anything at all. I assume Life After God is meant to be "idea" book - he seems to relish in bludgeoning the reader with an overstated Idea every once in awhile; but there's not much story to speak of, and while he manages to create some pretty good characters, he doesn't do anything with them. The emptiness and simplicity annoy me. I hope that people don't really think that my whole generation is a Coupland novel.

I think maybe the ending disappointed me the most. Coupland spends the whole book writing about people who have grown up without religion, and then at the end just says very bluntly, "Oh, I guess I still need God after all." This irritated me: nothing in the book really led up to it, and he doesn't take it anywhere. "Man, life is meaningless, time to get off the antidepressants and find something to believe in again." He doesn't show this, he pretty much SAYS it and that's that. The end.

Again, I thin I'm just really not a Coupland fan; I know a lot of people who love him. It's not that I haven't tried: I suffered my way through Generation X; I don't really remember Microserfs so I can't comment on that (I think I liked that one okay, or at least I didn't actively dislike it like with these other two); but the only book of his that I actually found any substance and insight in was also the one that I think was the most sloppily and embarrassingly written, Girlfriend in a Coma. I get the impression that most people who love Coupland first read him when they were pretty young, so maybe I just started in on these books too late?

i liked this so much more than i thought i would

luckily i picked this book up just before finishing a book that made me dislike reading (haunted by "the author"). this book is why i like reading, because it takes you to a different place and helps you put perspective on your life or understand some things that you just couldnt grasp alone.

a book like this is like a friend. and i love my friends. additionally i think all of my friends should read this book. soon.

i was a bit unsure starting the book, i liked it from the start but it couldve gone either way. by the time i finished "patty hearst" i knew i would read it again. the last story in that story made me cry and also want to have a goose as a friend for a year and a day.

life is a fucked up strange thing, a series of chances that you take and turn away from. i have given up believing that i will ever "figure it out" or that any person has it figured out. figuring it out vacuums out all of the fun that life is.

but it is also really stressful and sometimes very hard to cope with life when you know that it is an unfigureoutable thing and yet you still live every day. every second. because there is something there that you will eventually find - an "aha!" moment - and you will cherish every single second that you lived up until that day. and every day after it.

-

just as good on the second reading, sometimes even better.

I read this first one summer long ago, sitting between jobs in a small apartment in Birmingham AL. That was a summer when I'd stay up all night reading or scanning through cable channels and go out to a breakfast buffet at a diner just before dawn and exchange aimless conversation with other people who weren't sleeping and had no daytime lives. Put simply--- I fell in love with the stories Coupland tells here. However not? I was in the same stories.

Years later--- too many years later ---I still love this book. There's a lovely sad wistful grace in Coupland's stories here, and a gentleness that's unexpected.

Read this during lost summers. Read it when your apartment is a haven for ghosts. Read it when you're insomniac and alone at coffeeshops before sunrise.

A favourite. Yes.