Douglas Coupland takes readers on a captivating ride.
Packed full of ideas and always a joy to follow.
As always with Coupland, the ideas come thick and fast, they’re quirky, often funny, and frequently profound.
[Player One] feels essential because this is a novel obsessed not only with time, and the curse of experiencing the world through linear time, but with stories and the breakdown of storytelling as a way of making meaning in our lives.
As Player One haunts the pages of this book, the ideas and inferences you read will haunt your mind every time you indulge in a modern day convenience, such as filling a vehicle up with gas, making this book a worthy read.
The way Coupland moulds his fiction from the throwaway debris of North American popular culture is quite brilliant.
[Douglas Coupland has] an ease with the language of modernity that contemporary Great North American Novelists should envy... his Eeyorish pessimism, left-field humour and admirable ability to enunciate all of our half-formed thoughts raise this from a sterile dissertation on why modern life is rubbish into the realms of really great fiction.
A taut and scintillating exploration of time, Coupland’s tale is both smart and suspenseful while simultaneously questioning the meaning of narration.
In Coupland's real-time near-apocalyptic novel, a recovering alcoholic, a divorcée, a church-fund embezzler, a beautiful android-like woman, and a man who is distinguished by his prickly demeanor converge in an airport cocktail lounge at the precise moment when oil prices begin to rise and society begins to unravel around them. Such an intriguing premise could have lead to explorations of the nature of chaos and human resilience, but the author relies instead on cursory philosophizing, allowing his characters to ramble. The players emerge as near-caricatures who are forced to contend with each other's weaknesses and a small cast of strangers, from a sniper to a "false prophet" selling the Leslie Freemont Power Dynamics program. In one man's brusque assessment, the others are "a depressing grab bag of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of the most banal form of capitalism," words which reveal both the book's vivid style and an apt critique of modern consciousness. Though the book at times feels more like television than a richly conceived world, painting aspects of adults in crisis perhaps too broadly, it is redeemed an ending that allows some of them to survive.
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Douglas Coupland has surely reserved his place at the top table of North American fiction.” Independent on Sunday
Somewhere deep in Coupland’s consciousness is a little door marked greatness.’” Guardian
Douglas Coupland may be one of the smartest, wittiest writers around.” Esquire
Eighteen years on from Generation X, Coupland still satirizes pop culture better than anyone.” GQ
In Generation X author Coupland's latest, Karen, a thirtysomething divorced housewife, arrives at a hotel bar near the Toronto airport to rendezvous with a man she met on the Internet. Also at the bar are Rick, the bartender; Luke, a pastor who has just stolen $20,000 from his church; and Rachel, a striking but weirdly clueless young blonde. These four characters eventually pair off, but not until a global crisis has erupted around the oil market and unexplained chemical explosions seem to herald an apocalypse. Along with other players who enter and leave, the main characters engage in involved discussions on the meaning of life, as might be expected under such circumstances. These discussions range from the confessional and personal to larger issues both sacred and profane. VERDICT Eminently readable, humorous, and philosophical if at times slightly lightweight, this is a worthwhile novel that may also appeal to younger readers. It grew out of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Massey Lecture series, which Coupland headlines this October in Canada.—Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta Lib.