A review by jeffmauch
The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

2.0

This novel was just interesting enough to keep turning the pages, but just barely. I gave this one a shot because I had read another Coupland novel and saw promise in his writing, but now I'm starting to think he's just a very average writer. It's not that he doesn't do things well, he does, specifically when it comes to trying to show the internal ruminations of his characters, but that's not enough. In this novel we are really given 2-3 main characters and a handful of vague supporting ones. The problem here is that none of the characters are all that likeable and you're left shaking your head at their thoughts and actions. At first I thought Staples would actually be a good setting for a novel of disillusionment, but it's not as prominent a setting as I had hoped for. Our main character is an everyday loser in his 40s whose live had fallen so far off track that he's just a walking pile of sadness, but the catch is he has found hope through a book he has started to write. The problem is the book is horrible, as we the reader get to read it in between chapters of the main story. The problem is it's treated as wonderful by the other characters in the main story line... which just makes us, the reader, shake our head. The more I write this review the more disdain I'm finding for this book and it's characters, honestly I'm wondering what good I found in this book at all.