There were two problems with this book that stopped me from enjoying it properly.

1) The fact that it seems to end at the point when it should really begin. I did enjoy the build up to the apocalypse, but after it happens, the novel ends with the 'reversal' of the apocalypse and the characters beginning their mission to try and change the world (by constantly 'asking questions' to people? I doubt the efficacy of this plan). All of this is made possible by the grace of the 'ghost' of Jared, a highschool friend of the group who died before the events of the novel begin. The character of Jared is bizarre and behaves as a sort of jarringly charismatic fairy-godmother type character. It was weird. I didn't like it.

2) The novel seems to be heavily influenced by degeneration theory. The idea that 'civilisation' has reached the limit of its ability to 'evolve' and therefore can only 'devolve'. I have a lot of time for narratives that explore this idea. However, the novel also spends a lot of time critiquing capitalism and neo-liberalism and the harm it has brought to humanity. Prior to the apocalypse, the characters drift through life feeling empty and fruitless, embodying the anxieties of a society that has evolved passed the need for nature, faith or community. The apocalypse is caused by a weird epidemic that causes people to simply stop what they are doing, fall asleep, and then die. The group of friends are the only survivors left on earth. Subsequently, they are told that they have been chosen to try and save the world from its universal lack of purpose (basing the reason for the apocalypse assuming that everyone in the world feels as listless and bored as these guys do, is kind of problematic in itself). What isn't clear is why this particular group of people get to be the messiahs of the new world. There is no reason. You might ask why there needs to be a reason, and maybe I'm missing the point. However, if you a writing a novel that criticises society in its current state and argues for some kind of 'reboot', isn't giving the job of achieving this to a bunch of privileged middle class people (I might be generalising here) indicative of the same kind of aggressively individualistic self-entitled way of thinking that allowed such a society to exist in the first place? It doesn't make sense!

These two stars are given only because of the nice and catchy beginning of the book.

The rest just had me like "Why am I even reading this?"

Meh.

A promising beginning, with shades of the best of Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, but really fell away towards the end with a watery plot, cringe-inducing dialogue (I cannot stand it when a writer italicises a syllable for emphasis) and just general pointlessness. I was just going through the motions trying to finish it towards the end.

It was interesting to read something that I first (and last) read during a very different time in my life. I came across Coupland when I lived in New York City during my mid-20s. The timing was good. I was suffering from your usual existential crisis, across the country from everything I knew, waxing in nostalgia as only someone recently out of college could.

Rereading this now... I wasn't impressed. The characters pretty much all suck as people. I didn't like any of them. I was actively rooting against a couple of them, to no avail. There just wasn't any incentive to care about them or the plot, which was just confusing. No spoilers, but it gets all post-apocalyptic and then teaches moral lessons, or something.

Plus, there is a ghost that can impregnate people, and I don't even know where to go with that.