This review of JPod has also been posted on Amazon.com.
If you have not read Microserfs, stop now. Read it. This book is not exactly a sequel, but it definitely breathes the same air.
If you have read Microserfs, and if you liked it, you will like this book. It's Coupland at his witty, world-weary best, at least in places. The plot has so many twists and turns, and so many of them are bizarre, that I found myself laughing out loud several times during the not-so-many hours it took me to roar through this--what? Novel? Pastiche? Stolen diary?
To be sure, the structure of the book is sometimes baffling, and some of the characters are (intentionally?) one-dimensional. Some of the methods of character development are so blatantly obvious (lists of traits, letters that each character writes to Ronald McDonald to woo him) as to be both ludicrous and effective at the same time. Yet just when you think the book is off the rails you'll discover that you've come to care about the members of jPod, and to hope that Coupland the author (and Coupland the character!) will do right by them.
In short, if you've been waiting for Coupland to write another book like Microserfs--and I know I've been waiting nearly a decade--you're in for a treat!
No comments:
Post a Comment