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In Douglas Coupland's ingenious new novel – sort of a Clerks-meets - Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged "aisles associate" at a Staples outlet, condemned to restocking reams of twenty-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life. And then there’s Roger's co-worker Bethany, who's at the end of her Goth phase, and young enough to be looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in Aisle Six.
One day, Bethany comes across Roger's notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy she’s never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her – and spookily, he is getting her right. She also learns he has a tragedy in his past–and suddenly he no longer seems like just a paper-stocking robot with a name tag.
"Starred Review. No one else quite captures the dystopian malaise of our post-postmodernist consumer-junkie culture quite like he does." - Quill & Quire.
"Starred Review. Coupland shines, the story is humorous, frenetic, focused and curiously affecting." - Publishers Weekly.
"Like watching someone with multiple-personality disorder have a midlife crisis." - Kirkus.
This information about The Gum Thief was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
D.J.Wier
Douglas Coupland was born on a NATO base in Germany in 1961. He is the author of the international bestsellers Generation A and JPod, and nine other novels, among them The Gum Thief, Hey Nostradamus!, All Families Are Psychotic, Microserfs, and Generation X, along with nonfiction works including a recent short biography of Marshall McLuhan. His work has been translated into thirty-five languages and published in most countries around the world. Coupland, also a visual artist, furniture and fashion designer, and screenwriter, lives and works in Vancouver.
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