Coupland may have defined his generation, but unless he injects something into it, his writing will remain sociology rather...
Gen-X guru Coupland's (Life After God, 1994, etc.) third offering is a sprawling, amiable novel filled with the deracinated underachievers who have given their author both audience and theme.
Although Daniel Underwood (alias danielu@microsoft.com.) has his hands somewhat less than full, he hardly counts as a slacker. A 26-year-old bug checker at Microsoft, he lives in a group house with five other nerds, all of them vassals of Bill Gates and true children of their age. Postmodernism has left its mark: Characters are usually described in Jeopardy! categories, or compared to Hanna-Barbera cartoons or 1970s Barbie prototypes. Michael is a recluse who will eat only crackers, Kraft singles, and other flat foods that can be slid beneath closed doors. Susan, bored with the misogynist asexuality of nerd life, starts a movement for feminist techies- -called Chyx. When Daniel's father gets sacked by IBM, he and the kids set up their own software concern, Oops!, and look for venture capital in the usual shady places as Daniel gives us the play-by-play. Although there are plenty of detours along the way here—weird theme parties with female bodybuilders, a giant and never-ending computer diagram made of Lego blocks, raucous arguments over the decadence or salubrity of breakfast cereals—it's pretty clear from the start that Daniel is trying to figure out Life and Love, with a dead brother, a weak father, a sick mother, and an insecure girlfriend as parts of his equation. He manages to work something out by the story's end, although it must be said that most readers will see the finale a good six blocks away. An easy, pleasant read with little to go back for.
Coupland may have defined his generation, but unless he injects something into it, his writing will remain sociology rather than literature. (First printing of 125,000; first serial to Wired; $120,000 ad/promo; author tour)Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-039148-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
A landmark work of speculative fiction, comparable to A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, and Russian revolutionary...
Environmental unconcern, genetic engineering, and bioterrorism have created the hollowed-out, haunted future world of Atwood’s ingenious and disturbing 11th novel, bearing several resemblances to The Handmaid’s Tale (1985).
Protagonist Jimmy, a.k.a. “Snowman,” is perhaps the only living “remnant” (i.e., human unaltered by science) in a devastated lunar landscape where he lives by his remaining wits, scavenges for flotsam surviving from past civilizations, dodges man-eating mutant predators, and remembers. In an equally dark parallel narrative, Atwood traces Jimmy’s personal history, beginning with a bonfire in which diseased livestock are incinerated, observed by five-year-old Jimmy and his father, a “genographer” employed by, first, OrganInc Farms, then, the sinister Helthwyzer Corporation. One staggering invention follows another, as Jimmy mourns the departure of his mother (a former microbiologist who clearly foresaw the Armageddon her colleagues were building), goes through intensive schooling with his brilliant best friend Glenn (who renames himself Crake), and enjoys such lurid titillations as computer games that simulate catastrophe and global conflict (e.g., “Extinctathon,” “Kwiktime Osama”) and Web sites featuring popular atrocities (e.g., “hedsoff.com”). Surfing a kiddie-porn site, Jimmy encounters the poignant figure of Oryx, a Southeast Asian girl apprenticed (i.e., sold) to a con-man, then a sex-seller (in sequences as scary and revolting as anything in contemporary fiction). Oryx will inhabit Jimmy’s imagination forever, as will the perverse genius Crake, who rises from the prestigious Watson-Crick Institute to a position of literally awesome power at the RejoovenEsense Compound, where he works on a formula for immortality, creates artificial humans (the “Children of Crake”), and helps produce the virus that’s pirated and used to start a plague that effectively decimates the world’s population. And Atwood (The Blind Assassin, 2000, etc.) brings it all together in a stunning surprise climax.
A landmark work of speculative fiction, comparable to A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, and Russian revolutionary Zamyatin’s We. Atwood has surpassed herself.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50385-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
Here, after last year's Of Love and Shadows, the tale of a quirky young woman's rise to influence in an unnamed South American country—with a delightful cast of exotic characters, but without the sure-handed plotting and leisurely grace of Allende's first—and best—book, The House of the Spirits (1985). When little Eva Luna's mother dies, the imaginative child is hired out to a string of eccentric families. During one of her periodic bouts of rebellion, she runs away and makes friends with Huberto Naranjo, a slick little street-kid. Years later, when she's in another bind, he finds her a place to stay in the red-light district—with a cheerful madame, La Senora, whose best friend is Melesio, a transvestite cabaret star. Everything's cozy until a new police sergeant takes over the district and disrupts the accepted system of corruption. Melesio drafts a protesting petition and is packed off to prison, and Eva's out on the street. She meets Riad Halabi, a kind Arab merchant with a cleft lip, who takes pity on her and whisks her away to the backwater village of Agua Santa. There, Eva keeps her savior's sulky wife Zulema company. Zulema commits suicide after a failed extramarital romance, and the previously loyal visitors begin to whisper about the relationship between Riad Halabi and Eva. So Eva departs for the capital—where she meets up with Melesio (now known as Mimi), begins an affair with Huberto Naranjo (now a famous rebel leader), and becomes casually involved in the revolutionary movement. Brimming with hothouse color, amply displayed in Allende's mellifluous prose, but the riot of character and incident here is surface effect; and the action—the mishaps of Eva—is toothless and vague. Lively entertainment, then, with little resonance.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1988
ISBN: 0241951658
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1988
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