I'm not a big fan of Coupland. I've read some of his books but I couldn't tell you what they were called or what happens in them. He writes so cleanly and efficiently that the prose just washes over you pretty much in the same way that the TV movies some of the characters in this book work on do. Having said that I actually enjoyed Girlfriend in a Coma and find that the characters still resonate with me even after finishing it a week ago, wether I'll remember it in a year remains to be seen though. Coupland journeys through the lives of six incredibly dull characters that are vacuous and lost, in fact they have no redeeming features what so ever, so it was no mean feat keeping me interested in them but somehow he did. I won't bore you with plot details but I will say that it was a very original take on an 'end of the world' 'post apocalyptic' tale and that, despite being an atheist, I found the book very spiritual. I think Coupland's use of ghosts, spirits, religion etc. is very restrained and very effective. When it was published it was cited as a wake up call to the 90's, I'd say that the themes it deals with a more than relevant today. We see a world obsessed with work and the allocation of time, people too busy with themselves to observe the beauty all around them and too introspective to take stock of the damage they are doing to others and to the world at large. We see people desperate to read the latest fashion mags but indifferent to the needs of others. Now that I think more closely about it I don't feel that the characters have stayed with me because if I'm honest I'd have to go and grab the book to list their names. What did stay with me was the feeling that the world is on the cusp, that we live in a time where we can make a real difference or destroy it with indifference. Girlfriend in a Coma is basically 'What a Wonderful Life' on a global scale but where the plight of James Stewarts character stays with you, the lives of these characters quickly diminish leaving you with just Coupland's fears rattling around in your head. Enjoyable and thoughtful but will it stay with you?

2½ stars actually, as this book is a bit confusing all the way through. A girl, Karen, has visions of the world's destruction (people falling asleep in death) that are so horrendous that she falls into a coma for seventeen years, only to awaken just prior to her vision coming true.

For her friends, her child, which she had nine months into her coma, and her family, these years are spent in change. For her, not so much.

The aftermath is chaos, but only they can change things and save the world and all that is in it. A few lessons can probably be learned from this novel.

What starts off as a moderately interesting book with a clever story and filled with pop culture references, the book delves into this annoying, dreary and deviating,rant(and I stress the word rant)about 'life' and 'it's meaning' and the ending is just bad, and just a huge bunch of annoying and forgettable characters who are depressed for no particular reason and seem depressed even when there is meant to be joy. An annoying book that does not provoke 'deeper thoughts' and 'questions about life', just anger and frustration at what happens when dickheads write a book.

3.5 ⭐️

I read Girlfriend in a Coma when I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed. Even the Vicodin couldn't make this read any less painful.

DNF. Got ridiculous and not in a good way.

This short novel was based on the usual dystopian world picture: everyone is dead and at least until the few good survivors can get their act together and "go back to the land" they scavenge. The differences were that it starts with the pregnant girlfriend of a teenage boy, both part of a very sociable crowd of kids, falling into a coma.

17 years later she awakens (with a 16 year old daughter!) and her friends have all grown up but not necessarily as their best selves and everyone else in the world is dead. . The group have to learn that having everything (the electricity never went off) will not make you happy, you have to find meaning in life yourself. This is an explication of one of my favourite quotes, Human beings do not live forever

This little group of people had included a boy who had died young, before the coma, and he was the go-between between the afterlife and the world with magical powers. This was reasonably good and sustained would have been unique and very interesting. However, the author dropped the ball at this point and the ending was crap. If you aren't going to read the book, here's the ending: The whole world can be restored as it was and the girl can be the sacrificial offering to the gods who control life and death and slip back into her coma. Her choice. She sleeps.....

What a disappointment.

Is it because Coupland also lived in Japan and Hawai'i, makes himself crazy extrapolating what our current patterns of consumption will mean environmentally, or so shrewdly id's, adores and impugns middle class suburban life and its children that make me love his writing? Dunno, but I do. I found the characters in this book fully realized, in some cases tremendously sensual, and in all cases talking about things that I am curious about. Their wistfulness is nearly visceral.

This book blew me away, again articulating what had been my intuited sense of my generation's reality. I still choke up towards the end of Girlfriend in a Coma.

"A thousand years ago this wouldn't have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage... But not now. We crossed the line. The only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That's why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It's because the earth is now totally ours." (p269, hardback)

Sadly I think the reviews of this book miss the point of this writing . The events of the characters lives is not the main focus but their search for meaningful existence . So much of the text reminded me of the start of a new religion almost one of human internal evolution .
Some of the spots when Jared came back to talk to them dragged a bit but I thought if it as a structure of a song the way the book was written . The drawn out parts remind me of the chorus almost . I really like Coupland’s stories as they seem
to be a vehicle for his own thoughts on existence .

Unrateable, for reasons I've gone over before, so I'll just repeat what I said on instagram the other day: "I see your Station Elevens and your Stands and your Zone Ones and I raise you my dearly prized first edition of Girlfriend in a Coma. I know, I know; it’s serious.

The book really started out amazing but it kinda fell downward in the end. I think it was trying to capture such big themes and it didn't fit in quite well with the rest of the story. I was quite disappointed when I reached the last few chapters because the plot was really building up and I was anticipating a really mindblowing ending. But it didn't get to that. I even found it hard to believe and relate to the philosophical stuff they were trying to establish in the end. The worst part was I couldn't see the whole point in the story anymore. It tried to go so deep - it drowned itself in the process.

I actually started this book two years ago while in New York City with my ex-boyfriend; oddly, it still smells like his apartment two years later. I read a third of it then when he was at work and it was too cold to venture outside and set it aside as things got busy and life got kind of serious for a while. I picked it up on Friday night with 200 pages to go and a Young’s Double Chocolate Stout in hand and settled in for some reading. I was done an hour and a half later. Now, I’m the cheapest date around, tipsy one beer in, drunk after two, and I can’t tell you if it was the stout or the book talking but it was incredibly moving. I can see exactly why some people wouldn’t enjoy Coupland, he’s so damn earnest. By the end of Girlfriend in a Coma, I was a bit teary and entirely hopeful for humanity as a whole.

In a book about a group of aimless friends who fall apart after their friend goes into an inexplicable coma at 17, we see the end of the world. Rather, we see the world ended by humanity’s lack of concern for it and more importantly, themselves. It’s part cautionary tale, something that I can see those who pose more than feel rolling their eyes at, but it’s also entirely a call to remember what’s important. The small, the magnificent, the screaming clarity of being alive, really alive. Two days later and sober, I still feel the pull to ask more, to do more, to enjoy more so I’m going to give this one to Coupland instead of the chocolate stout.