Rating: 
Summary: Read this last.
Review: At best, this book is preachy and strange, at worst it's a response, published as an afterthought, to a stoned, shoe-gazing dare.
You have to know going into it that this is not a good book. If you have never read a Douglas Coupland book before, stay away from this one. If, however, you have an affectionate fondness for Coupland, if you've read all of his other books and you find his struggle to reinvent a moral vocabulary *before*it's*too*late* absolutely adorable, then go for it. This book is like an eccentric aunt, and should be appreciated that way.
Rating: 
Summary: A dreadful romp through the land of suck.
Review: Douglas Coupland's style is amateurish and the plot of this book is weak. How good can a book be with the title Girl Friend in a Coma? All of the events in the book were too convenient and the dialog was irritating. If I were a character in the book, I would kill all of the other characters and maim the author. The end is incredibly annoying, told from the first person point of view of a ghost. When I finished the book, I threw it at the floor and folded the pages. I put my shoes on, took it outside, and proceeded to jump on the book. My anger did not subside and only slight satisfaction was received from damaging a library's book.
Rating: 
Summary: Kind of pointless
Review: Girlfriend in a Coma is broken into three parts. The first part is told by Richard. His high school sweetheart, Karen went into an unexplained coma the night she lost her virginity. For weeks before she has had strange dreams. Premonitions of what is to come. She feels that she has seen something in the future that she shouldn't have seen and feels like she is going to be taken away - taken hostage because of it. And she is. She was impregnated the first and only time she ever had sex and her daughter is borne to her while she is in her coma. She remains in an uneventful coma for nearly eighteen years. Her close network of friends try to grow up during this time. They try to find deeper meaning in their lives, but they are left unfulfilled. Richard especially is a mess. He's living for the day that Karen wakes up from her coma instead of living for himself, for his daughter or for his friends. The second part is in 3rd person. Karen wakes up from her coma on a day holds many coincidences for her friends. Good things keep happening to Richard. Two of her friends, Pam and Hamilton arrive at the hospital ODing on heroin. They have stereo drug-induced dreams which they later describe as video snapshots of the end of the world. Both dreams are identical. Karen wakes up and tries to get on with her life and tries to recover, but she is haunted by the reason she went into her coma in the first place. Something's going to happen. Soon. She gives a date to the events to come and waits. The third part is told by a ghost named Jared. Jared went to high school with Karen, Richard and their group of friends. He died during their junior year of leukemia. The end of the world has come and leaves only Karen, her daughter, granddaughter and her network of friends behind. Jared is there to explain to them why this happened and what they can do to fix it. I think this book had the potential to be so much more interesting. Instead it became preachy and weak. We have overtaken the Earth to a point beyond where it could repair itself if we weren't here. We need to be content with our life and that means actually doing something with our life. Questioning our life. Questioning other's lives. I hated the ending. Again, I thought it was completely weak and it could have been so much more with more meaning. The author tries to make you think, but he does so in a way that he doesn't explain anything at all. There was something about the book I liked. As with Hey Nostradamus I was left with an eerie, haunting feeling and I think that's good. There's something about Douglas Coupland that I DO like, I just can't put my finger on it. Both of the books seemed to dance around issues, leaving you to guess what happened. Neither book really had any resolution at all. I'll probably try one more Douglas Coupland book to see if I like this author or if he just leaves me unsatisfied.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic portrayal of boredom in suburbia
Review: Having grown up in the exact neighbourhood where Coupland sets most of his works, I enjoyed the minute details of this book. Life in the bedroom community of West Vancouver is about as he portrays it. Having this apocalypse set in my own backyard, all of the descriptive tools Coupland use paint a fantastic image of life in a sleepy eutopia. Struggling to be simply ANYthing is possibly what seperates my Generation-X-ers from most other demographic groups. The relaxed prose of this novel is far more personally gripping then the usual 'hit you over the head with pointless detail' styles you find in far too many contemporary novels. While many find the climax of the story a bit too watered-down, I find that it is an effective tool for describing the feelings of the characters...what IF the world simply ended with a yawn? No big fireworks, no big Michael Bay-style destruction...just simply ended like the batteries running out. Coupland is apparently not for everyone, but then again who is? Coupland perfectly portrays the generation he represents, and makes no apologies for it. Read this book, read it several times.
Rating:
Summary: Coupland Dropped The Ball On This One
Review: I have loved Douglas Coupland for years, so when this book came out I was plenty excited for it. What a disappointment. The story was choppy, amateurish, and this book has the single worst ending of any book I've ever read. A complete waste of time. I threw this book off my balcony when I was done because it was just so bad I couldn't stand to have it in my apartment for one more moment. Read Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Microserfs, or All Families Are Psychotic, but stay away from this one if you know what's good for you. Sorry Douglas, but the ending was just so awful and disappointing that I'm still not over it over half a decade later.
Rating:
Summary: This book was an insight to the thoughts that flood my mind
Review: I have read all of Douglas Coupland's books (except Shampoo Planet) and this was my favorite Coupland book to date. I admire Coupland's style of writing simply because he has a way of portrying the thoughts and that fill many of our minds. At first the SEEMINGLY shallow and trashy plot nearly kept me from reading, but as soon as I started I could not put it down! As they say you can't judge a book by it's cover and I'm certainly glad I didn't. As a 17 year old I may view the world differently than some of you critics out there, but I stand by my ratings, this book was excellent. Through the obviously fictional apocolyptical events that unfold, Coupland questions the meaning of life and our purpose on this rapidly desensitizing planet. I thoroughly enjoyed and I advise anyone else out there who questions their own exsistance to read this novel!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: I have read this book 5 times I think since I first laid my hands on it. All of my friends had read it too even those who don't enjoy reading as much as I do. We all will read and read even though the end never changes we all still hope deep down she won't have to go. It is one of those books that makes you think about everything and ask a lot of questions! I recommend it for everyone!
Rating: 
Summary: Not perfect, not for everyone, but entrancing nonetheless
Review: I know most wouldn't agree with me, but I actually really enjoyed Girlfriend in a Coma. At first, it looked like I was in for more of the same-old-same-old "what to do with our aimless lives" trademark theme of Coupland, but I was pleasantly surprised with a slightly sci-fi interjection halfway through the book, which I loved. (This is why I always force myself to finish a book, no matter how bad - I wasn't really enjoying the book a great deal until I got to part 2). Not much can be said for the characters, but the series of events in this book I found enchanting. Frustratingly, the book provides - and doesn't even *attempt* to provide - answers to the where-is-this-generation-leading-us questions it asks. That's probably half the point, but it was a little lazy and these parts of the book could have been written a little more constructively. Still, I was on the whole satisfied with Girlfriend in a Coma. Not a bad read for those who don't really consider themselves sci-fi freaks, but don't mind a bit of mystery injected into what you'd expect would otherwise be a regular drama.
Rating:
Summary: Not perfect, not for everyone, but entrancing nonetheless
Review: I know most wouldn't agree with me, but I actually really enjoyed Girlfriend in a Coma. At first, it looked like I was in for more of the same-old-same-old "what to do with our aimless lives" trademark theme of Coupland, but I was pleasantly surprised with a slightly sci-fi interjection halfway through the book, which I loved. (This is why I always force myself to finish a book, no matter how bad - I wasn't really enjoying the book a great deal until I got to part 2). Not much can be said for the characters, but the series of events in this book I found enchanting. Frustratingly, the book provides - and doesn't even *attempt* to provide - answers to the where-is-this-generation-leading-us questions it asks. That's probably half the point, but it was a little lazy and these parts of the book could have been written a little more constructively. Still, I was on the whole satisfied with Girlfriend in a Coma. Not a bad read for those who don't really consider themselves sci-fi freaks, but don't mind a bit of mystery injected into what you'd expect would otherwise be a regular drama.
Rating:
Summary: It's pretty witty, Smiths fans!
Review: I picked up this book at the library based soley on the title; I had never read a Coupland book before. I picked it up because it is the title of a Smiths song.
Almost everyone who reviewed this seemed to find this book dull or pointless. I liked it. It was interesting and while it was trying to make a point about nonconformity that was not too subtle, it stilled managed to amuse me. Scattered throughout the dialouge are Smiths song titles. If you like the Smiths, like offbeat books, and have often daydreamed about being the last people alive on earth, then this book is amusing.
I think the author had a lot of fun with a lot of his readers who failed to catch the blatant refrences. It seemed to me as though he almost wrote the book based around the choosing of random lyrics in a random order and THAT had me giggling non stop. The book to me seemed like a weird concept album that not everybody got or found amusing. But fret not, it was still pretty good without the inside jokes.
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