And still in the throes of hormonal imbalance. I thought I was over it, but I found myself yelling at my bacon today. So, guess not.
A little book review: Douglas Coupland, all around cool author, coiner of the term (and writer of the novel) "Generation X", has a new book out called "Generation A."
Naturally, when I saw this in the library, I grabbed it. He's quirky, he's zeitgeisty, and he's Canadian, to boot. What's not to love?
It started out looking moderately interesting: five different hipster young adults in a dystopian, undefined future where bees are extinct and pollination is done by hand, get stung by, simultaneously, by bees. This causes the five protagonists to be whisked away to various places where they are probed and quizzed and drugged, in order to find out the essence, the intangible why, as to they in particular among all others in the world, were stung.
Of course I was reminded of "Super Sad True Love Story", which I mentioned awhile back (I'm too lazy to look up the date. C'mon, I'm GenX.), which was also a novel about disaffected hipsters within a dystopian future. Guess I've got a theme going.
Anyway, Coupland's book chugged along in his inimitable way, but then he had his characters all start telling stories. So he's got stories within the story, and they're violent and, for lack of a better word, dumb. To quote the southern belle who briefly dates Jerry on Seinfeld, "It's all just so much fluff."
It really feels like Coupland needed an excuse to tell these random and bizarre stories, so he plunked them into what seemed a promising sense of a plot. And they just go on. And on.
Frankly, I just got sick of reading these stories. And when I looked ahead in the book, they went on until very, very close to the end of the book.
It's disappointing when a book you really like just falls apart, and you can't even make yourself finish it.
Sorry, Doug; I liked it at first, and I wanted to love it, but I couldn't finish it.
As a typical fellow GenXer, I just couldn't be bothered.
Inquiring minds want to know: What did you yell at your bacon?
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