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: Question mediocrity
Review: Coupland writes a book in which the ghost of Jared -- dead teen football stud and the mouthpiece from which the majority of the big, important "messages" spew -- and we're told (since we associate so much with the main characters, don't we?): Question everything. Okay... Why was this book written? Why was this book published? Can't Coupland do any better than repeat himself? Why has he delivered this lame hybrid of "The Celestine Prophecy" and an episode of "Friends"? Why didn't his editor(s) re-direct this effort? Do we really need another tale about the woes of middle-class children in adult bodies and their valliant struggle for...optimism? Aren't there people in the world who face more difficulties than Coupland's characters? Wouldn't their stories deserve our respect more than these? Has this author -- who borrows his title for this work from a Smith's song -- ever heard another song by lead singer, Morrissey called "Reader Meet Author"? If so, why doesn't he question his credibility in writing this story which aims to enlighten us but comes from what seems the shallowest background possible?
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: the still tempest
Review: Okay...if...if...a lot of ifs-- A lovely ghost named jared, a group of youngsters which soon misses one member, karen, the soon-to be-in-a-coma-grilfriend of the protagonist. if you like coupland in general, you will like "girlfriend" for sure, if this is you first book by coupland...things will seem a bit strange...I would definitly not recommend it as an intro to his work, especially if you also don't like dickens "a christmas carol". Coupland must surely like that book - the general philosophical stream of "girlfriend" is a bit of a twin to mr. scrooge and the events in this often-told christmas night (and here comes the lovely ghost jared I mentioned above in place), except for the fact that there is not one mean guy named scrooge who has to face himself but a group of nice, young, normal people nobody would mind calling his friends- you might even call them cool and in-style, mixed with a bit grungy dunst... The general idea is straight and simple as it ever has been...the presence developes out of the past, the future is the child of the present...and you can change the future if you change its past, the present (am I getting mixed up here? ) anyway, do try to become a true-er person and things might fall into place... the future is told nicely apocalyptic yet very normal..mixing real breezes with little irreal storms has always been couplands speciality...or storywise: the end of the world with all people dead except the friends who have now all the supermarkets they need to survive the disaster...very brilliant, indeed. to bring things to a somewhat end, preferably a happy one from some perspecitve, coupland has to stretch things a bit to much to make ends meet, though. If you are not generally hating unrealistic pathes within a actually realistically told story, the destiny of jared, karen and the other friends will be a superb way to spend a night. But please, once again: Don't read it as your first coupland. Make sure, though, that you listen to the Smiths song where the title is from.
Rating:
Summary: Coupland Back On Track
Review: As a avid Coupland fan, I awaited his latest offering with anticipation. With "Polaroids" being so disappointing it was good to see him back on familiar ground with "Coma". Even though that this book is quite different from his earlier style of writing, Coupland certainly retains his zeitgeisty, postmodern ethos. The "armageddon" imagery in his earlier books (most notably Life After God) takes free reign here and the third part of the book seemed somewhat surreal in character. Coupland's strong character development and interplay is enjoyable as always. His usual "word picture" of Vancouver certainly makes me feel as though I've been there! The end of time drama in which Richard, Karen, Pam, Hamilton, Wendy and Linus get caught up is a spookier side to his writing and aimed as a strong warning to us. The search for spirituality is, again, an important motif in "Coma" which I feel is a great side to his writing and shows even more development than before.
"Coma" is probably not the best Coupland novel to read if you're a first timer. Life after God is one of the finest books I have ever read. Microserfs is up there with the best too. I'd read those first if I were you but "Coma" is a great comeback. It definately gets the award for the "most amount of Smith's songs mentioned in a novel"!
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: 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: Girlfriend in a Coma. I know. I know. It's really serious.
Review: Liked this much better than Generation X. 17-year-old Karen goes into a 17-year-coma after having sex with her boyfriend. Talk about ways to scare you into not having sex. Well, she didn't go to sleep immediately afterwards, but she was really insistent on the two of them having sex. Before she slips into her coma, Karen tells her boyfriend, Richard, that she saw the future. Karen goes into a 17-year-coma, and wakes up to find her boyfriend still waiting and a daughter. She seems perfectly normal when she wakes, except she talks about the world coming to an end. The first half of the book basically revolves around the people in Karen's life after she goes into the coma, the second part deals with life after her reawakening, and the third part, well, you don't want me to give that away do you? This still had the same "what is the meaning of this sad, sad life?" theme, but I think it was much better presented in this book. And if you've read GenX, you'll notice some parallels with some of the characters (Hamilton equals Dag, Richard equals Andy, and Pam equals Claire), but all-in-all the story is pretty good. I like how Coupland manages to make you think without overwhelming you or depressing you. What I didn't like was the fact that book was somewhat anticlimatic. Well, it's one of those endings you'll love and hate, and I'm sure, after mulling over it a few days, I'll like it better
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: 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!
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