Girlfriend in a Coma - Douglas Coupland Reviews

Girlfriend In A Coma is one of those books that I had always wanted to read but never got round to then someone requested a swap on Readitswapit and this was one of the novels on offer. Not fancying anything else, I finally succumbed and decided to give it a go and what an experience I let myself in for! Reading on here, most of the ...  Read the complete review

Girlfriend In A Coma has almost exactly the same character as its protagonists - human, blowing hot and cold, involving but somehow not that likable. That's not to say it's not a rather good book. But it's entirely possible to leave it not knowing whether to congratulate or slap the main characters. The book begins with two ...  Read the complete review

What do you do after the end of the world? What if you lived on, you and a few friends guided by the ghost of your earliest friend who had died years before in High School? Girlfriend in a Coma is a book that asks these kind of questions. Serious almost unimaginable questions. Its biggest question is this: What do you do if your ...  Read the complete review

I'm Jared, a ghost. This is the incipit of Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland, the first book I actually read from the author of Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Life after God, Microserfs and Polaroids from the Dead. I came across this book by pure chance, as I noticed it while browsing my local Charity Shop. As ...  Read the complete review

I had high expectations for Girlfriend in a Coma, since the idea for the book appears to be very good; the end of the world, the miracle of waking from a coma after years and so on. However, I found the novel disappointing overall. There are very beautiful sections in the novel, some of which are made up by the lyrics and titles of Smiths ...  Read the complete review

Some books just cannot deliver what they set out to. They set out their stall, express their abstract and then fall short. And I am afraid to say the Girlfriend in Coma falls well short. Perhaps I should come clean and say that this is the first work by Coupland that I have ever read and it came my way as a recommendation from a friend. ...  Read the complete review

Imagine if one day you woke up thinking that you had just been having a long deep sleep and instead you discovered that in fact you had been in a coma for the best part of twenty years, you had gone from being 17 to 35 overnight? Imagine that you stared around and all these people were starring back and you knew they were your friends ...  Read the complete review

This book is a total work of genius! I was recommended it by a friend who said it was good, and boy, was he wrong - it's fantastic! I really could not put this book down, I was totally immersed in it. The whole concept of this book is amazing and fascinated me from beginning to end. I don't want to divulge any of the plot, as then ...  Read the complete review

This book seems to be natural Coupland. Everything seems as normal, until the bombshell drops, more or less literally....The second half of the book makes for some of the most bizarre, yet beautiful writing i have read. The book is more of an intense look at life than any of his previous books, and is an absolutely transfixing read. Coupland, as ...  Read the complete review

Girlfriend in a coma represents something of a departure for Gen X author Coupland. Whilst the novel is firmly based in his favoured locale, Vancouver BC, and with his general character types, twenty somethings, it heads off in a slightly different direction from his norm. His sharp and witty humour is toned down a little, and the ...  Read the complete review

The finest Coupland novel i've yet read. The characters are not such a departure from his usual milieu: already-jaded, wise-cracking Canadian high school kids who grow into further-jaded, bitterly wise-cracking twenty-somethings, all while in search of some meaning in their lives. This book is an attempt to give these emotionally-stunted ...  Read the complete review