The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My second Coupland in as many months, the other novel being Microserfs,and for a time I thought I'd become addicted to his style of writing, his keen observations, and his dark humour. I love Coupland's thoughtfulness, his playfulness, his cleverness, the layering of voices that conveys the texture of ordinary contemporary life; it's the modus operandi of a performance/conceptual artist as much as a writer. And I guess where it can also feel a bit plotlessly redundant is when you realize that the voices are all really, at base, the same voice, conveying facets of the same essential message about alienation with the same ironic tone. In the case of Microserfs the voices belong to a group of Silicon Valley computer programmers. In The Gum Thief the voices belong to unremarkable losers, principally Roger a divorced mid-forties man and Bethany a mid twenties Goth girl, both working at Staples, and wondering, as David Byrne sang, "How did I get here?" Other voices in the mix belong to Bethany's mom Dee Dee, Roger's Ex Joan, and characters from Roger's novel manuscript in progress "Glove Pond." It's a mash-up, where fiction meets fact meets fiction, that ultimately goes nowhere, sort of like the characters. Still, Coupland has a way with a phrase and metaphor that uncannily captures a sense of what consumer/voyeuristic/empty culture feels like, and for that alone, and the fact that he's got a great sense of humour, makes reading The Gum Thief worth the effort.      


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