The Gum Thief
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland is best known for his book jPod and while I haven’t read the popular book, I doubt I will. I’m not being harsh; I’m being honest.
The Gum Thief started out with such promise. A forty-something man with a quite downhill life is working at Staples where he meets a young twenty-something girl. The two of them write back and forth to each other about life philosophies and woes. The first forty pages had me laughing out loud and agreeing with the main character’s cynical and depressing view of society. As the book crept on, I was still enjoying it because I thought I was waiting for something to happen. Here’s where my idea of a good modern novel and Coupland’s depart.
If nothing major would have happened in the book, I still would have given it more than one little lightning bolt. Modern stories, whether they be books, movies or poetry, have a spirit (if you could call it that) of apathy. People with less than satisfactory lives are introduced to us under the pretense that there is much change in store, yet because of the character’s flaws no change occurs or the change is not the saving grace
the character anticipated. The Gum Thief was a cop out.
I don’t mind spoiling the ending (because it was lame), but if you plan on reading, I would skip down to the next paragraph. Coupland ends his book with the most cliche of all modern novels. The depressed and distraught twenty-something attempts to take her life. Though it didn’t kill the character, it killed the book.
If you’d like to read it, go ahead. It will give you a few laughs and make you want to remember some of the lines, but it’s not the ‘great book’ you were hoping for.
