Just Finished Reading: Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland (FP: 1998) [281pp] 

Vancouver, Canada 1979. With High School just about to end, a group of friends look towards the future with a mixture of hope and anticipation. With the 80’s almost upon them it seems that the world is full of possibilities, full of unrealised potential. But Richard’s girlfriend Karen is beginning to think otherwise. It’s nothing she can say with absolute certainty, but she feels that something bad is coming, something she calls the ‘darkness’. The future, she is increasingly convinced, is not a good place. But how to avoid it? Taking a few slimming pills with a mouthful of vodka she finds a way and falls into a coma, sleeping her way through the 80’s. Waking in 1997, inexplicably and much to the astonishment of the medical community with her brain function completely intact, Karen is confused and disappointed with what her friends have managed to do with their young lives. Seemingly out of place with a 17-year-old mind in a much older (and weaker) body, Karen tries to come to terms with a future she never expected to see. Most disappointing of all is that her long slumber hasn’t saved her from experiencing the end of the world... 

This was, as you might imagine, a strange read. After over a week to think about it, I’m still not sure how to classify it or whether or not I even liked it. Mostly this is a coming of age (or growing into adulthood) story full of disappointment and disillusion. Karen’s friends each have their separate ‘journey’ and ways of coping (or not!) with what life throws at them. But all of them, especially her boyfriend Richard, are lost in a world they struggle to comprehend. Karen’s ‘return’ to the land of the living narrows the focus of the discrepancy between their teenage expectations – which Karen remembers as if it was yesterday as it is for her – and what actually played out over the ‘lost’ decade. That alone might have been an interesting narrative perspective if the author had left it as that (which, honestly, I wish he had). But he went further by introducing – or actually reintroducing – the ghost of a high school football player and the aforementioned ‘End of the World’ which is where things got mighty strange! At this point I was debating whether or not I should classify the novel as Fantasy or even Science-Fiction but eventually decided that it didn’t really fit into either category. Apparently, the book is classified elsewhere as ‘Literary Fiction’ so I’ll leave it as that (whatever that actually means). 

The important question I’m guessing your thinking about is ‘did I like it’? Unfortunately, that’s not really a question I can answer in a straightforward way. This isn’t a BAD book. It’s certainly well written (or more than adequately so) and has some very memorable characters throughout. I don’t think that there was at any point a thought of DNFing it. But saying all that I never really thought that I was reading anything particularly profound – which I think the author was going for. The overall ‘thrust’ of the novel seemed to be concerned with the meaning of life, or rather that apparent (and seemingly false) meaninglessness of existence. Again, that’s all well and good – interesting and potentially profound indeed – but I thought the narrative failed to deliver a sufficiently insightful payoff and that the ending was more than a little lacklustre. If the author had ditched the fantastical elements and, instead, concentrated on the difference between the hopes and dreams of the teenagers (as vividly remembered by the now reawakened Karen) and the drudgery and disappointment of her ‘grownup’ and cynical friends this might have been a much better novel. Reasonable if, for me, a rather missed opportunity.

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