The Gum Thief - Softcover

Coupland, Douglas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747593825 ISBN 13: 9780747593829

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2008

Synopsis

Paperback. Pub Date :2008-1-1 Pages:.. 275 Roger is a middle-aged and divorced aisles associate at a Staples outlet His co-worker Bethany is facing fifty more years of shelving Post-it notes Then Bethany discovers Rogers notebook and finds that hes writing diary entries pretending to be her -. and weirdly. hes getting it right Bethany and Roger strike up a secret correspondence. and as it unfolds so too do the characters of Rogers work-in-progress. Glove Pond. a Cheever-era novella gone horribly. horribly wrong.

About this title

Review

"Right from the get-go we're deep in Coupland country with The Gum Thief: the uber-now pop culture references, the casual, deliciously snide vernacular, the loopy, neurotic characters you can't help but love, and of course, the latenight conversational tone of Coupland himself, whose writing reads like a phone call from an old friend. No one else quite captures the dystopian malaise of our post-postmodernist consumer-junkie culture quite like he does. Call it CoMo: Coupland Modernism."
--"Quill & Quire" (starred review)
"Coupland shines, the story is humorous, frenetic, focused and curiously affecting."
--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
"The Gum Thief is solidly funny, verging on poignant...An innovative, fast-paced story without the bells and whistles of JPod, but just as topical and lively and relevant. Another Coupland gem."
- "The Globe and Mail"
Praise for "JPod":
"[JPod] is a work in which his familiar misgivings about life on the technological cusp are again invoked, but also one in which the skills he's been developing as a novelist pay off, where his satirical streak and his social consciousness finally stop fooling around with each other and settle down together. . . . JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away."
--"The New York Times Book Review"
"Imagine a cocktail of "The Office," "Weeds" and "Wired "magazine, shaken not stirred . . . The master ironist just might redefine E.M. Forster's famous dictate 'Only Connect' for the Google age."
--"USA Today"
"Coupland once again nails the zeitgeist of the age. . . . The best thing about JPod is itscharacteristic good writing . . . and its dark, unflagging wit."
--"Calgary Sun"
"JPod is a seriously funny book . . . a rolling thunder of sustained comedy, first page to last, as it sends up and skewers the shamelessness and amorality that define our era. . . . Coupland's timing is impeccable: JPod is the right book at the right time."
--"The Globe and Mail"
"Coupland is possibly the most gifted exegete of North American mass culture writing today. . . . JPod is without a doubt his strongest, best-observed novel since Microserfs."
--"The Guardian"

"From the Hardcover edition."

Synopsis

Roger is a middle-aged and divorced 'aisles associate' at a Staples outlet. His co-worker Bethany is facing fifty more years of shelving Post-it notes. Then Bethany discovers Roger's notebook and finds that he's writing diary entries pretending to be her - and weirdly, he's getting it right. Bethany and Roger strike up a secret correspondence, and as it unfolds so too do the characters of Roger's work-in-progress, Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0747593825
• ISBN 13: 9780747593829
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288