

Carregando... The Gum Thief (2007)de Douglas Coupland
![]() Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. Wow, lots of reviews on this book and they are all over the place. I did not expect to like it, but it snuck up on me. Books about writing a book tend to be mind bogglingly dull, but Coupland pulled it off. I loved the way the imaginary book being written, which starts off as an amazingly bad Cheever rip off, develops into a story with meaning and pain as it reflects the characters inner lives. ( ![]() Not my favourite Coupland book...but then I started out with Generation X and Girlfriend in a Coma so it was going to take something special to top those. This, whilst being totally readable and peppered with the spot-on observations of modern life that Coupland makes so well, is not that special. I like Douglas Coupland and his brand of witty cynicism, but this story was just slightly too clever for my taste - and such a short novel should not take so long to get through. I'm still not entirely sure what I was reading, in fact - a story in a story (in a story?), an exercise in creative writing, or just two miserable people working at Staples, but I didn't connect with any of the characters, whoever was writing them. I’ve been hoping for a book like this. This is the kind of book I read for, as if I am fishing. Fishing for what, you ask? I’m not sure, but I know it when I see it and this is it. Here is a novel told simply, starkly, imaginatively and empathetically, with a good deal of humor and philosophy thrown in for good measure. You’d never guess how hard it is to find books like this. I am obviously late to the Douglas Coupland party, but at least I made it despite the horrible traffic. Another thing: I know this book was vitamins to my soul because I never, not once, intentionally noted what page I was on as I was reading. You know those books—the ones that are just good enough to keep on with, but which are a solid chore to read. That is not this book, at least not to me. This book is funny, smart and sad and it’s a breeze. Thank you, Douglas Coupland. This was my first look at Coupland. I was skeptical, and did find the opening a bit clunky, and then plodding. It reads like a lot of what's labelled Young Adult these days. (An observation, not a criticism, incidentally.) Without giving anything away, two of the letters near the end saved this, for me; probably because I identified with their authors more than the younger ones. I'm glad I read it, but won't be rushing to get my hands on more Coupland.
Douglas Coupland’s new novel, “The Gum Thief,” puts the act of writing center stage. The book is not conventionally narrated, but told obliquely, through an assemblage of writings and letters, from which the reader reconstructs the story like the pieces of an Ikea wardrobe. This is a novel so postmodern that it has disappeared up its own irony and come out on the other side. In anyone else's hands, it could read like an environmental treatise by Al Gore translated by a teenage dirtbag after 17 vodka Red Bulls. But Coupland's skill is in his love of the ridiculous, like a schoolboy whose words make him giggle. His books are essentially pointless. Maybe that's why they are such a guilty pleasure. Está contido em
Over the course of several months, two retail workers at an office supply superstore--Roger, a divorced, middle aged "aisles associate" at Staples, and his young co-worker, Bethany, an early twenty-something, former Goth--strike up a unique epistolary friendship. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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