How I Came To Read This Book: It’s one of my friend Sarah’s favourite books.

The Plot: Karen and Richard are teens in 1974 when they sleep together for the first time. Afterwards, Karen confides in Richard that she’s been having dark, mysterious visions – and shortly after that, she slips into a coma. Nine months later, a baby girl named Meagan pops out (Karen’s child by Richard) but Karen is still comatose. The next seventeen years go by with details on the fate of each person in Karen/Richard’s circle of friends while Karen remains comatose. When she finally awakes, the world seems to be coming to an end, as Karen’s visions once upon a time suggested they would.

The Good & The Bad: This is a bizarre book on many levels. On one hand it reminds me a bit of a recent read, Sarah Rainone’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” in it’s study of young adults in the 80s/90s, but on the flip side it’s this totally random sci-fi book as it progresses, similar to Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone”. My main critique of the book is the juxtaposition of these two elements might turn off some readers who either want to get wrapped up in the emotion and forget the random apocalyptic turn the book takes, or those who are all for the end of days but want to get past the wussy character drama. I’ll admit, I found it increasingly polarizing as I progressed through the latter half, although I was still curious to see how things would turn out in regards to BOTH elements of this story. Coupland is a bit of a random writer as it turns out and this book kind of encapsulates his bizzaro worldview.

The Bottom Line: An entertaining if strange read.

Anything Memorable?: Nope.

50-Book Challenge?: Nope.

As the title suggests this is a pretty moody and morose book. An almost dream like quality seems to pervade these pages and yet this still remains one of Coupland's strongest books to date. The book is soaked in a beautiful and nostalgic melancholia that sees the characters longing and mourning the loss of their youth and the innocence that went along with that. Coupland captures this mood beautifully and presents it in a number of inventive and original ways that really make for compelling and unforgettable reading.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Parts 1 and 2 of this book, but the last hundred pages or so felt like I was trapped in a bad post-apocalytic movie. It just dragged on and on. It felt like Coupland didn't really know how to give this book an ending. And there were some parts that just depressed me for some reason.

This being the first novel if his that I read, I would probably wait a month or so before diving into his other books. I was planning on reading Generation X right after this, but I don't think that's happening. I need something FUN to read right after this.

Uggh, the book took forever to read. It would've been better to have read the story in 1997 as originally planned.

Douglas Coupland has a way with words, very clever. The plotting and characterization in this book does not live up to his phrasing. It can't be easy to write a book about nihilistic characters because their very nature is dull. He succeeded in some parts, and I wouldn't say failed, but something in that family, in other parts (Well, that was a messy sentence. Apologies).

I loved the opening chapters, for that he gets a full five stars. The rest is uneven.

I'm very happy I finally got around to reading it, and I would definitely read his other books (the current ones at least).

this book was my sister's. she liked douglas coupland, and because she was so much older and wise than i, i followed her instruction. i remember i staked myself out in the family dining room, surrounded by fragile glass and crystal that only my mom knew the origins of. the supple nature of the room matched the frail character, the girl, who falls into a myserious coma...for like, twenty years or whatever. coupland stresses her diet and tendency to gobble speed so that she may achieve maximum talent while on the beaches during her spring break. but, alas, the coma traps her in, and she remains. the best part of the book is that which i refuse to tell you, but, in the end, this plot line envelops the story.

i read this book a very long time ago have not opened it since. but it's a strange nugget of fiction that is forever burned into my memory. good book. great author.

Through the teenage years this was as close to a Fahrenheit 451 as I was ever going to have. Rereading a lot later I looked at some parts perhaps less enthusiastically - the ending is a great teenage drunken 4am conversation and maybe the drone I am now wasn't quite as convinced. But still, the lost teenagers drifting between sense of purpose (Wendy) and just drifting (Richard) were great. I loved as a teenager that they didn't know either, and seemed to function. And Karen's role in the second half reads differently at 'her age' where she asks questions of the characters and how they turned out. Anyway it was immense then, and its great now.

Igazából a címe volt az, ami miatt felfigyeltem rá, majd a fülszöveget elolvasván arra jutottam, hogy „Úristen, nekem ezt el kell olvasnom”, de a vége mindent elrontott. Nem is az, ami történt, hanem a körítés mellé, az a „tanmese”. Blöe.

a very big like for the food for thought that this book provides! I loved it!

Пусть говорят, что книга о банальном: о том, что мы разучились общаться, зацикливаемся на нестоящих того вещах, эгоистичны, живем впустую. Но мы также живем, зачастую, эти банальности не замечая, не осмысляя их, совершая глупейшие ошибки, потому-то и стоит говорить о простых вещах. Запомнился роман замечательной динамикой, изменяющейся по ходу повествования, словно это не книга вовсе, а музыкальное произведение, которое длительное время развивается, томя и подготавливая слушателя, а потом выливается в мощную концовку, стремительно заканчиваясь и оставляя тебя на минутку в ступоре, позволяя мыслями "догнать" себя.

Interesting premise. Great 80-90s throwbacks. Always liked Coupland’s voice. Laid back, fleeting, yet punchy.

This is the first book I have read by Douglas Coupland, despite me always feeling like I know I would like his writing. For some reason I have just never got around to reading any. I read the back of this book and expected one thing and what I got was something totally unexpected. I can sort of understand the bad reviews this book gets for being weird, disjointed, lots of books meshed together and so on, but for me personally these oddities were what made it special. At the beginning we are introduced to the ghost of 16 year old Jared who died of cancer. We then meet Richard and Karen, two of his friends. At this point the narration is from Richard's point of view. He and Karen sleep together for the first time and a few hours later she has fallen into a coma. This seemed straight forward to me...I read on, and got more of what I expected; Richard and the other friends, Hamilton, Pam, Linus and Wendy all cope with this event in their own way. There is an added complication when it transpires that Karen was pregnant and nine months later gives birth to the baby girl her and Richard conceived that night. The story goes on at a slow yet mesmerizing pace. The characters were all brilliant, which was more than enough to keep me hooked...and the storyline of how their lives unfold while she remains asleep was gripping and touching...But then things changed. Karen awakes. Jared returns, and it soon becomes obvious that these two characters have knowledge of a terrible event on the horizon which could mean the end of people on earth. At this point I became totally hooked. Somehow the author had gradually built up the tension and the sense of foreboding throughout all the previous chapters about life after Karen fell asleep, to the point where I was reading the book with my stomach in knots, yet not really knowing why! There are so many things you can say about this book; what it all means, what the messages are, what it says about modern life and human nature. I loved it. I loved the mystery and intrigue. I loved the ending, and I loved all of the characters. Although dark and foreboding in places, somehow it left me with a sense of hope, which is hard to explain. The last chapter was uplifting in so many ways. I'll be thinking about this one for some time.

It's a well-written book, and it goes fast, but the second part is just plain bizarre - in a bad way. This book mentions the perils of drug use, and I guess the second part of the book is a demonstration of what kind of strange ideas you get if you do drugs while writing a book?