Synopses & Reviews
Narrated in the form of a Powerbook entry by Dan Underwood, a computer programmer for Microsoft, this state-of-the-art novel about life in the '90s follows the adventures of six code-crunching computer whizzes. Known as "microserfs," they spend upward of 16 hours a day "coding" (writing software) as they eat "flat" foods (such as Kraft singles, which can be passed underneath closed doors) and fearfully scan the company email to see what the great Bill might be thinking and whether he is going to "flame" one of them.
Seizing the chance to be innovators instead of cogs in the Microsoft machine, this intrepid bunch strike out on their own to form a high-tech start-up company named Oop! in Silicon Valley. Living together in a sort of digital flophouse "Our House of Wayward Mobility" they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world.
Funny, illuminating and ultimately touching, Microserfs is the story of one generation's very strange and claustrophobic coming of age.
Review
"The novel's real fun is the frequent and rapidly fired pop-culture references that span the 70s, 80s and 90s...and Coupland uses them with relish." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Coupland continues to register the buzz of his generation with fidelity." New York Times Book Review
Review
"[T]his novel's more serious ruminations about the physical and social alienation of life on the Information Superhighway never achieve any real complexity." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[T]the characters are fascinating, and the relationships they develop, though unconventional in every way, are vivid and lovely." Booklist
Review
"An accurate look at a thriving subculture." Boston Globe
Review
"What Coupland does brilliantly is give us a view from the inside by letting his characters talk until we feel like we're part of the group." PC Magazine
About the Author
Douglas Coupland was born on December 30, 1961, on a Canadian NATO base in West Germany. He grew up and lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Girlfriend in a Coma reestablishes Douglas Coupland as one of the most talented, engaging and important writers of his generation. Profoundly moving, darkly comic, this eerily prescient novel exploring questions of faith, decency and existence is set against the backdrop of a society hurtling toward the end of the century. As
People magazine so deftly put it, "His voice still resonates with the generation he named."
He is the author of Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Life After God, and Microserfs.