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Generation A

3.53 of 5 stars 3.53 · rating details · 3,574 ratings · 410 reviews

“Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ag...more

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published September 1st 2009 by Random House Canada

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Nov 27, 2009 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: humor, sci-fi

I feel like I owe a debt to Douglas Coupland for tagging my age group as Generation X. Yes, it got wildly over hyped in the ‘90s and led to countless marketing slogans like ‘New X-Treme Corn Flakes’, but that wasn’t Coupland’s fault. And Gen X sounds a helluva lot cooler than ‘Baby Boomers’ or what we would have gotten labeled without it. Probably something like ‘The Pre-Millennial Generation’ or some other equally crappy phrase.

At first, Generation A seems like it’s going to be even grimmer th...more I feel like I owe a debt to Douglas Coupland for tagging my age group as Generation X. Yes, it got wildly over hyped in the ‘90s and led to countless marketing slogans like ‘New X-Treme Corn Flakes’, but that wasn’t Coupland’s fault. And Gen X sounds a helluva lot cooler than ‘Baby Boomers’ or what we would have gotten labeled without it. Probably something like ‘The Pre-Millennial Generation’ or some other equally crappy phrase.

At first, Generation A seems like it’s going to be even grimmer than Generation X. Set in the near future, the world is winding down. The global economy has essentially collapsed and the lack of gasoline has made travel wildly expensive. A new legal drug called Solon has most of the world addicted. Worst of all, the mysterious extinction of all the bees in the world has led to an agricultural disaster.

But when 5 young people in various parts of the world are stung by bees, they are quickly gathered up for study and held for weeks. Upon their eventual release, they find themselves world famous, and drawn to each other in a way they don’t understand. Confused by the experiments that seemed to be as much about limiting their stimulation (no books, no TV, no brand logos, etc.) as they were about their blood work, the five people eventually meet and discover that they may be the key to the future.

Coupland uses a couple of wonky sci-fi ideas to explore a couple of really interesting concepts. Much is made of the idea that people who read have brains that tend to make them more individualistic and allows them to enter an almost Zen state that stops them from worrying about the future. But if there’s no concern for others or the future, why would anyone try to build anything better? Is the only choice being a consumerist drone or total selfishness?

And for being about the world being in horrible shape, there’s some really funny stuff here. We get everything from what a call center worker in Sri Lanka thinks of Americans calling in sweater orders to earth sandwiches in New Zealand to a character’s hatred of corn in Iowa to a hilarious short story worked into the plot about Superman getting fed up with ungrateful people.

It never really occurred to me before reading a Kurt Vonnegut quote about Gen X that Coupland uses here for the title that they both had a lot in common. (Calm down. I didn’t say he was as good as Kurt.) But both often worked in wild sci-fi ideas with a very humanistic bent and humor, but both also had enough cynicism to prevent sentimentality about the human condition.

I know it’s somewhat fashionable to bitch about Coupland, but I still like the guy, and this is one of his most enjoyable reads yet.(less)

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Jun 09, 2010 Jason Pettus rated it 4 of 5 stars

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

As I've mentioned here before, about the closest I come to being a literal "completist" of a contemporary author's work is probably Douglas Coupland (I've now read ten of his thirteen novels, and was a pretty obsessive fan at that when I was younger); for those who need a refresher, he's the ~~fifty-somethi~~...more

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May 03, 2011 Daniel Roy rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary

I haven't read Coupland since Microserfs and Generation X, and was intrigued by the title's promise that this was somehow a followup to 1991's Generation X. Let me tell you up front: it's not.

The book starts intriguingly enough by building five characters from the US, Canada, New Zealand, France and Sri Lanka. These characters were quirky and interesting, and although shallow, they kept me reading thanks to Coupland's prose.

But midway through the novel, the plot comes to an abrupt halt when thes...more

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Jan 06, 2011 Penny Ribbons rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Feb 17, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I wouldn't consider this Coupland's best, but I was drawn in immediately and stayed up past my bedtime several nights in a row in order to finish. It's been several years since I last read Generation X, which this book is supposed to parallel, so forgive me if I make (or miss) overly obvious comparisons between the two.

Oh fiction, how do I even talk about you anymore? I feel like Coupland's earlier work often focused on how our increasingly mediated and culture-saturated lives made us both isola...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Miranda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

"As always, Douglas Coupland presents us with an interesting novel inhabited by unusual charactors and only semi-improbable plot lines. This futuristic tale about a societey plagued with problems stemming from the disappearance of bees is at times entertaining, engrossing, and laugh out loud funny, but there is a deja-vu-ness about this novel. As we're first introduced to the main charactors (the B5s) there was a vague sense of recognition from other Coupland novels ... almost as though we've se...more

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Mar 30, 2013 John Teehan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have yet to read a bad book by Coupland, and I've read nearly all of them. GENERATION A continues that trend in that I found myself devouring it in no time. It's an engaging tale well told. As is often the case with Coupland's books, this one is full of commentary on modern life, our relationship to media and technology, and the ever-present query regarding our place in the universe.

There seem to be some levels of deeply thought out allegory at work in this story as well. While the most super...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Fiver rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've yet to read a Coupland book that did not have at least two laugh-out-loud moments in it, and this one is no exception. Same goes for his hilariously ironic throwaway ideas, like the earth sandwich found herein. Still, his novels achieve a startling similarity after a while that makes reading them in any sort of succession feel redundant. Likewise, the humour and disenchantment that makes his books funny can also keep one from feeling a real emotional connection with the characters, somethin...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Ajay R rated it 4 of 5 stars

There is no official definition for the term 'Generation A', other than what 'Kurt Vonnegut' postulated way back in 1994, to a group of University students.

"Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures...more There is no official definition for the term 'Generation A', other than what 'Kurt Vonnegut' postulated way back in 1994, to a group of University students.

"Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago."

This term conjoined by Vonnegut overlaps with the generally accepted definitions of Gen-X (people born till say early 1980's) and Gen-Y (one which could be taken as people born just after the end of Gen-X). So it would be probably correct that the characters/events of the novel 'Generation-A' by Douglas Coupland would address most of us born from the late 1975 and who are in their late 20's to mid 30's now (both late Gen X and early Gen Y people). People who are just old enough to remember the pre-internet/landline days, days of good old fashioned grocery shops, but who were young enough to easily migrate to the new technologies without making much of a fuss and with just a little bit of longing for those old days.

If Coupland's earlier novel 'Generation-X' spoke about the dawn of the new era of incredibly fast paced technological advancements and its attendant effects on people and society at large, 'Generation-A' looks at the high noon of the new era (or the dusk/night of the era depending on your view of the current state of things). Anyone who has read Coupland earlier wouldn't be surprised at his opinions in this novel, of the current era which tend to be mostly on the negative side. Also like in 'Generation-X', he uses stories within stories as a way for the characters to validating themselves, to escape from their mundane and dreary real lives.

Set somewhere in the near future, it is a world where bees have become extinct. Not many people however seem to worry about it, other than a longing to see those lost creatures which were once a part of probably every kids (at least the rural ones, who were probably stung at least once) childhood. Haven't bees been a part of the childhood of most of us, even if we didn't see them directly, didn't we get to at least hear about them when we read/talked about honey. And in a contrast, wasn't an understanding of the phrase 'birds and bees' the first step to the end of one's childhood and initiation into one's sexuality (anyone remember the hilarious conversation due to misunderstanding about the 'birds and bees' in 'The Remains of the Day'?). But no such situation for the kids/youth in this novel and they don't really care about it. There is so much on the Internet to be enraptured about. In such a time, 5 persons are stung by bees, each one of them in a country. Thus begins a series of events that is going to change their life like never before.

As soon as new of their being bitten by bees spreads and it does spread very fast indeed, they are taken into custody by some shadowy scientific organization that does some tests on them. It's crazy, where after allowing the bees to die out, people are now clutching at straws, looking for any opening that would bring back the bees or at least an understanding of what makes the bees tick. A little late in the day, one might say but aren't we always fated to fix things up, after first screwing it up in the first place. After some time, they are released, but they cannot go back to their earlier lives as it is. Reason? They are now celebrities, victims of creatures long believed to be lost. They are even referred to as the chosen-ones (an obvious parody here). But how did their details become known to the general public? The omnipresent Internet is obviously the reason here. 'Zack' the first one to be bit was in the process of carving a large image of his private organs in his corn field so that it could be photographed from space (must be some new kind of art, I wouldn't be surprised it does actually happen in the future, if it has not happened till now). So the video of his getting bit is uploaded to the net and yes, in keeping with the true tradition of our times it goes viral giving unprecedented popularity to 'Zack' and the other four. What impact a single video has, raising someone from relative obscurity to world wide fame (or infamy) in a very short time. What a kolaveri right? So easy these day to get one's quota of 15 minutes of (in)fame.

Proving true the adage 'any news is good news', Zack uses it to earn money, going on the talk show circuit and into various ventures to earn money. He is the only one among the 5 who is at easy with his new status, even reveling in it. But not everyone can bear being in a fishbowl which their lives have become. The others can't bear the constant scrutiny their lives is subjected to, a feeling of being caged so that the whole world can view them at it's leisure. So in a feeling of solidarity they want to get together, when a scientist makes them an offer to take all of them to an island. The catch? They have to tell stories, stories that cannot be taken from real life and have to be wholly imagined.

Not that the part till now was bad, but this to me is the highlight of the novel, the portions where the five tell stories. Stories are always underrated, mostly thought of a means of whiling away time, to keep one from being bored, nothing more. But that's not so. Stories provide us a way out from our daily lives yes but it also makes us live the various lives that we would/could not live otherwise, tells us and others about our innermost desires, aspirations and hopes which we would not openly say other than in the so-called stories. In short stories that we tell and read, say a lot about ourselves than any psychological profiling could, and it does give a kind of meaning of our life, a hope that stories could true and even if they don't, the time spent in the stories, living the various lives would have been worth it. So it is with the stories told by the 5. They start off with incidents that are wholly imaginary, then events from their lives creep into the stories, sometimes with subtle variations (which reflect the desires of the story teller). Sometimes the incidents of one person creep into the stories of another, the names of the characters start to intersect. This also raises the question of how much of a fiction is actually there in a fiction. Can one tell a story that is devoid of all real life relation/feelings of the story teller. How does one's feelings creep into the story without the author even being aware of it. These are questions that come to our mind while reading this part and it is indeed interesting to think on those lines. And oh, the stories told too are of course very interesting.

While this is a thoroughly enjoyable novel a complete joy ride, one has to say that there is a kind of predictability in the novel especially in the first parts One reason is that satirizing about technological advancements, the society is kind of a 'been there read it' thing. Every other book on this theme these days seem to take pretty dim view of our society (rarely have I read a book which looks favorably on ourselves), so there is not much in the first part of this novel which is novel or shocking. People who have read other Coupland works would find many things familiar thematically. So when we see Julien (one of the five bitten) whose entire life revolves around video games and who spends days in it without even going to school, it is not new to us. Similarly 'Harj' from Sri lanka, who is working in a call center is kind of passe. There is however a delicious subversion on e-commerce and celebrity page 3 culture here. Harj does a little side business where he sells 'Silent Mp3' (i.e) mp3 that purportedly has the sound of silence (!) in the rooms of celebrities. It has become a huge site and Harj is being interviewed by 'New York Times' when he is bitten :). So while this part is entertaining, it's like an eagle that is gliding and hasn't yet soared, which it does in the part about the stories.

Though 'Generation X' and this novel are not related in terms of characters/events, the two could be read as companion pieces. The tag line for 'Generation X' says 'Tales for an accelerated culture'. The tag line for Generation A could be 'Tales for a culture headed towards the abyss' or 'Tales for a culture headed towards the next El dorado'. It depends on your point of view. While it may not be a breathtaking novel, it does offer enough delights for the reader. Don't miss it if you come across it.(less)

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Jun 16, 2012 Mark Juric rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I did not read "Generation X". Let's just get that out of the way. I think I maybe should have now because there was something fundamental missing in this book. It does not stand on its own.

This was one of the most uneven books I've ever read. It started out a solid 5, dropped to a 4 about a quarter of the way in, and collapsed into a generous 2, two-thirds through. It teetered on the brink of "are you kidding me? There is no way I'm finishing this thing", stumbled back to a respectable 2, but t...more

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May 28, 2011 Pat rated it 4 of 5 stars

Review of Generation A – Douglas Coupland

A follow-up of sorts to his debut novel, Generation A also presents a cast of twenty-something year olds that are trying to make sense of the world around them. The setting is a near future where it is near unthinkable not to be connected to the Internet by PDA, phone, or a laptop at all times and where bees are thought to be extinct. That is, until five seemingly random people are stung all around the world years after the mysteriously vanished from the...more Review of Generation A – Douglas Coupland

A follow-up of sorts to his debut novel, Generation A also presents a cast of twenty-something year olds that are trying to make sense of the world around them. The setting is a near future where it is near unthinkable not to be connected to the Internet by PDA, phone, or a laptop at all times and where bees are thought to be extinct. That is, until five seemingly random people are stung all around the world years after the mysteriously vanished from the planet.

It’s a great setup and Coupland milks it for all its worth probably because the not-so-distant future that he depicts is one that looms somewhere in our future. The details might differ—bees will go extinct because of a different reason, the latest and greatest in pharmaceuticals may well be something entirely unlike Solon—but it’s not very hard to imagine that the world that Zack, Samantha, Diane, Julien, and Harj try to navigate will be ours, soon, as well.

The novel is something else than an attempt to point the failing state of ecology that humanity is engendering. Generation A is not dystopic in a sense that it is trying to provide ecological social commentary. Though the human interaction with nature is a common trope found in Coupland’s novels, here it is used as another tool to further investigate the modern dilemma of the hyper connected world; the question that is continuously asked and tried to answer in this novel—whether it’s through Harj’s time with the “Craigs,” the descriptions of the five main characters time in each of their clean-rooms devoid of any contact with the outside world, or the circumstances in which they were stung in the first place—is how to define individuality in an always connected world.

Perhaps the most interesting answer to be found to this question comes in the form of Solon, the newest and latest drug to cure depression and take away all the psychological ills that life may have inflicted upon you, which in a post-bee world does sound quite useful. As one of the Craigs points out: “The future? Not for me. Not for us…I don’t want to think about next year’s web headlines and enter a doom spiral.” Solon is the cure for connectivity. It makes its user feel incapable of caring about the rest of the world or anyone in it. It offers complete solitude; utter individuality. And the effect is so desirable that its users become immediately addicted after the first use. The pharmaceutical cure for the world of tomorrow is to be in solitude.

It’s a fascinating idea and worth investigating. Read this novel if you like well written and thought provoking fiction, or general dystopias, or just really good story telling. Coupland hit it out of the park with this one.
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May 25, 2011 Cori rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love Douglas Coupland. He is a true Canadian gem and I leap at any opportunity to read something new from him. Usually it means I have to wait a while, because I don't like reading hardcovers and it usually takes a year for the trade paperbacks of his work to be released (I wouldn't have this problem if his works were available on ebook...). Generation A was a painful wait for me. I ALMOST bought the hardcover about 20 times while I was waiting. Then, I finally bought it in trade and it sat on...more

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Apr 04, 2011 Lindsey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

Though it had been a while since I read Coupland I recognized all the familiar touches within the first few pages. The narrators are young and savvy but jaded characters, seemingly remote from one another but clearly sharing a destiny within the framework of the novel. The setting is classic dystopia with the most modern flourishes; it's definitely the first novel I've read that mentions YouTube, for better or worse. There's that distrust of science, of corporate greed, of governmental authority...more

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Mar 10, 2011 sabisteb rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: buch, science-fiction

Gottes letzte Generation – Filet vom Krimileser

In einer nahen Zukunft. Die Bienen sind ausgestorben und die Menschheit muss sich alternative Nahrungsmittel erzeugen. Die Welt und die Zukunft sind so trostlos geworden, dass sich viele Menschen mittels einer neuen Droge namens Solon die Zeit schneller vergehen lassen, um das Leben so subjektiv kürzer ertragen zu müssen.
Da gibt es plötzlich einen neuen Hoffnungsschimmer: 5 Personen auf 5 Kontinenten werden plötzlich von einer Biene gestochen. Ist d...more

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Aug 24, 2010 Alice rated it 2 of 5 stars

Oof. I don't understand how a guy who wrote such brilliant books at the beginning of his career has deteriorated so badly. I can't remember the last time I actually enjoyed a Coupland novel, but Shampoo Planet and Microserfs are two of my absolute favorite books, and I've read each of those probably 200 times. (I also like Generation X and to a certain extent Life After God, but I'm not a huge fan of anything he wrote after that.)

As usual, Coupland's narrative voice is way too hip, with way too...more

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Aug 18, 2010 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars

I’ve never hidden my admiration for the work of Douglas Coupland. I admire the creative flare and originality that permeates his catalogue of work, and the precise nature to which he can articulate satirical observations of contemporary society that in my eyes escapes the majority of commentators. There hasn’t been a single book I’ve read that hasn’t lead me to genuinely ponder the questions posed to the reader, and this was no different. When reflecting on his latest work Generation A I choose...more I’ve never hidden my admiration for the work of Douglas Coupland. I admire the creative flare and originality that permeates his catalogue of work, and the precise nature to which he can articulate satirical observations of contemporary society that in my eyes escapes the majority of commentators. There hasn’t been a single book I’ve read that hasn’t lead me to genuinely ponder the questions posed to the reader, and this was no different. When reflecting on his latest work Generation A I choose to focus primarily thematically as I believe this really is the crux of why his stories are written.

This book is marketed as a return to the storytelling format of his most well publicised and read work Generation X (1991). In truth, the book reads like a consolidation of Coupland’s previous work, adopting the unorthodox parable style short stories of both Generation X and Life After God. We are introduced to the protagonists in completely separate stories that are eventually brought together by concurrent bee stings (in a near future world in which bees are thought to be extinct), we proceed through the book and come to understand how everything in this book serves a purpose. The characters, their personal stories, and the stories they choose to eventually tell each other collectively form the critique that this book makes of 21st century western culture.

The characters of Generation A themselves serve as caricatures of what many of us have become in an age dominated and consumed by our expectation for instant gratification in every aspect of our lives. People will forever be born now not knowing a world without google, wikipedia and having access to information from across the world instantly. As an example, the first introduction to anyone we have is to an heir to a corn dynasty, whose daily routine consists of using his tractor to create vast images of phalluses in his crops only viewable from satellites, while nude, and while a man on the other side of the world pays to view this live via webcam…. Coupland makes it deliberately hard to invest anything in the protagonists as they are amiable but ultimately shallow reflections of the gadgets, computers and social networking sites (etc) that they represent. Indeed, every character we meet, whether it’s ‘The Craigs’ (apolitical areligious clothing branded obsessed American teenagers), Julien (a World of Warcraft obsessed Frenchman) or the wealth obsessed scientist, is immersed in some kind of abstract fascination. Furthering the stance Coupland takes in Life After God or Shampoo Planet therefore, we see God being replaced by a desire to find real meaning in any number of the artificial realities we have made for ourselves.

If you read more than two of three of Coupland’s works it becomes clear that both stories, and the human need to understand their own lives in a linear narrative (comparable to a story) is something very important to him. I suppose the real question is whether human existence should be thought of as quantifiable into progress or lack thereof, and at what point do we consider the degree to which chance rather than a prospected sense of destiny to some unknown and better future is what shapes our belief system and our understanding of ourselves and our behaviours. To what extent do we really understand how our own actions have taken us to this point in our lives, and how different had we followed any of the infinite paths constantly open to us, could our lives actually be? Is it constructive to even have these thoughts? Would we be happier if these things never crossed our minds? Indeed, those in the world of Generation A are reflective of this, falling for a new drug named Solon, that allows users to be entirely fixated with the present, living it and experiencing it with no regard for any sense of future or past.

The other major theme is in relation to a search for truth. Every character, from the ‘gap yearing’ students (also Craigs!) trying to ’find themselves’ that Harj detests or the protagonists trying to establish what made them special enough to get stung is on some kind of search for truth or meaning. The second half of the book is made up of short stories, which the protagonists have been told that by telling will grant them access to the truth they are looking for. Now if we can return to the earlier concept of people thinking of their lives as stories, the question remains as to in this context why we would make such underwhelming decisions! The absurdity of the concept of truth is somewhat addressed by the surreal nature of some of the short stories, but also when Julien’s insistence of first using an online story generator as opposed to his own creativity. Is this actually a more truthful depiction of our lives? A hodgepodge of recycled ideas from a finite source put together in a slightly different order to make something supposedly unique. The short stories ask questions to which there are no real answer. There is no real truth. How does one rebel in a culture that doesn’t believe in anything? Does a lack of belief prevent you really falling in love? If Superman were real would be become a debased alcoholic addicted to kryptonite martinis and rack up unpayable debts? (yes really!)

The outlook for Coupland is ultimately optimistic. The insatiable desire to question, a fierce resistance to becoming stupefied, and to make our own real world lives into interesting stories is what Coupland is actually preaching.

To fans of Coupland, his style and stance will be at once familiar. I feel however, this is the most cogent expression of his look at life so far and worth a read even if you haven’t read anything else.(less)

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Jul 18, 2010 Thurston Hunger rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Jul 18, 2010 Bob Redmond rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bees

I've enjoyed many of Coupland's books, and did enjoy and appreciate moments in this one. The premise is most exciting: after the disappearance of honeybees (a plausible event given the planet's current agricultural and climate issues), five young people nevertheless each get stung by a bee. What happens next is the story of Generation A.

The plot gets in the way of Coupland's fresh ideas about how disparate things are related: young people, old cultures, governments, science, mad scientists, gene...more

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May 31, 2010 Idleprimate rated it 2 of 5 stars

ouch. I'm not sure what to say about this book, and so am going to say very little. coupland has long been devolving into a caricature of his caricatures. there were many elements within this book that might have been developed into different books, but instead they were mashed into each other, cancelling each other out and leaving nothing but the endless drone(no pun intended) of Coupland's smarmy too-hip-too-breathe voice. if the characters had mattered, it would have been dreadful that five d...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Larry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Kudos to Douglas Coupland for a powerful opening on one of my favourite themes:

“How can we be alive and not wonder about the stories we use to knit together this place we call the world? Without stories, our universe is merely rocks and clouds and lava and blackness…. What is prayer but a wish for the events in your life to string together to form a story – something that makes some sense of events you know have meaning.”

As usual, Coupland creates a cast of characters with extremely quirky lives...more Kudos to Douglas Coupland for a powerful opening on one of my favourite themes:

“How can we be alive and not wonder about the stories we use to knit together this place we call the world? Without stories, our universe is merely rocks and clouds and lava and blackness…. What is prayer but a wish for the events in your life to string together to form a story – something that makes some sense of events you know have meaning.”

As usual, Coupland creates a cast of characters with extremely quirky lives, experiences and attitudes – yet characters still rooted in a familiar modern life experiences that feel quite familiar.

The story takes place in the not-too-distant future. Five young people in different countries, from different backgrounds, become the first people in decades to be stung by bees, which were thought to be extinct for some unexplained reason. Each character is a complete hoot, Coupland-style.

They live in time where a growing portion of the population is becoming addicted to a new drug, Solon CR, which decreases anxiety by “severing the link between the present moment and a patient’s perceived future state. “ The drug also turns people into solitary beings who feel no need to be with others.
After their bee stings, the five young people are taken into custody by mysterious captors. They are initially isolated and studied, and then brought together – and directed to tell stories to one another. The characters gradually become aware and talk about the use of story-telling as a life-coping process.

In the end, they learn they have been held captive by the man who created Solon, a drug that he likened to having a similar affect to that of reading book – it withdraws one from society by placing them in a separate reality. He discovered the five young people were the key to developing an antidote for Solon.

While book-reading (and the use of Solon) creates a withdrawal from other people, story-telling does the opposite, by bringing people together to talk and listen. The five young people were biologically unique in that their brains secreted a chemical when story-telling that could be used for an anecdote to Solon. Having become rich addicting the world to Solon, he planned to get even richer by selling the treatment.
Meanwhile, the five young people realized they were likely on an evolutionary path toward developing a hive type consciousness (hence the bee attraction).

Well – brilliant quirky characters, and probably a brilliant story idea that somehow become lost in the convoluted story of the drugs and kidnapping.

While the idea behind this novel had great potential, it didn’t quite gel.

I found J-Pod far more satisfying. But in any case, I’m pumped to read a lot more Douglas Coupland.
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Dec 27, 2009 Felicity rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In the past I have really enjoyed Douglas Coupland's novels (though I've still never read Generation X). He has such a wonderfully dark, bleak sense of humor. This novel, however, was just plain boring--so tedious it put my teeth on edge. Firstly, I'm not sure if Coupland was trying to make a larger social statement through his narrative about humans and their relationship to earth. I don't think so, because that is not what Coupland does....but, it was difficult to tell. If he was, it was a spe...more

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Dec 09, 2009 George Dickerson rated it 2 of 5 stars

Okay, so I should mention that ever since I grabbed Microserfs off the shelves of my junior high library about 12 years ago, completely wanting to look through it just because of the cover, and ever since that book enthralled me and regenerated my love of reading, I've carried a deep respect and gratitude toward Douglas Coupland.

Of course, years and experience change the writer and the reader, but I've continued buying each book as soon as I hear about it. Eleanor Rigby was the one that sparked...more Okay, so I should mention that ever since I grabbed Microserfs off the shelves of my junior high library about 12 years ago, completely wanting to look through it just because of the cover, and ever since that book enthralled me and regenerated my love of reading, I've carried a deep respect and gratitude toward Douglas Coupland.

Of course, years and experience change the writer and the reader, but I've continued buying each book as soon as I hear about it. Eleanor Rigby was the one that sparked a sort of unease, a newly skeptical eye that for him I just didn't want to have. Then jPod, which I chose not to read mostly because I didn't want my memories of Microserfs tainted in any way.

Then I stumbled upon The Gum Thief, which I read in an afternoon and felt pretty good about, even though elements of his writing were starting to feel tiresome. Worse, the wearying effect of his formula and his repeating themes had reversed in my mind, like when a lover's eccentricities go from endearing to irritating after you break up. Suddenly I was reading lines and rolling my eyes, because he was trying to write against his age. He was trying to project into an age that he wasn't when he wrote his former successes. He was turning into the 30something who hangs out with teenagers, trying to impress them with how novel it is that he's heard of the music they listen to. But still, The Gum Thief had enough really stellar moments, and unfolded in interesting enough a way, that it was not a negative experience -- it was a highly flawed book that was still a joy to read.

But fuck, then Generation A happened. Here's a book that speaks of a looming unfulfilled book contract, of a desperate bid to stay relevant. Here's someone writing the life you live without really understanding it; someone writing as an outsider and making gross missteps.

Quick: Do you know anyone who plays World of Warcraft? Do they refer to it by the full name every time? No. And PDAs? Really? Throughout the book there are dozens of name-drops that felt like they were written as [POPULAR THING:] placeholders.

You could excuse these (plentiful) sort-of dialectic blunders as idiosyncrasies of the haphazardly-fictionalized setting, but that'd be a pretty weak excuse. This is very much a writer who has only ever lived and thrived in the pop culture, who still feels like he has things to say but either no longer feels like he speaks the language of the people he wants to say them to. Worse, he no longer seems to have anything new to say. Here's book number seven all about lonely people meeting serendipitously and being brought together by stress and instantly liking each other quite a lot. One of them is the sexually thrilling alpha male, one (or more) of them is the charming overly verbose supergenius in disguise (this time hidden behind a Simpsons reference that would have felt relevant in 1994) , one of them has a barely medical profession that allows them to conduct eleventh-hour medical miracles (dental hygienists can expertly excise tracking beacons from deep in human tissue without causing severe damage I guess).

What made me so mad -- albeit irrationally -- while reading this book was seeing that it was just a desperate bid to remain relevant. It is liked scraped fingers grasping the edge of a cliff, and as someone who cares deeply about the man trying to scramble back up, the sight is too harrowing to watch without feeling queasy. Worse still is buying the newest book from the artist most dear to you and feeling for the first time in most of your life like he cheated you out of 25 dollars.

Fuck this book.(less)

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Oct 13, 2009 Darrell Reimer rated it 1 of 5 stars

“Generation A mirrors 1991's Generation X.” It says so, right there on the back jacket. I read that and figured if Douglas Coupland was returning, in some manner, to the book that inflated him into what he is now, I was keen to read the by-product.

I don't usually mark up my books, but three pages into Generation A I felt compelled to take the lid off my Roller-Ball and write, neatly, in the margin: “How can a guy who is almost 50 years old write a book populated by characters so fastidiously stu...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Martin rated it 3 of 5 stars

A great start, I was hooked. The idea of bees dying out is one I have often pondered and a world where that is so, a dying world, was an interesting setting. The storyline of 5 seemingly random bee stings in this dying world had me hooked.
I loved the characters, each so different and unique, but also so eerily similar in their manner. Each added a different spice to the mix and it worked well.

A good middle, I wanted to know what was going on. I had to keep reading each bite of each persons story...more

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Feb 14, 2011 Molly Raspberry rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-prose-poetry-short-story

I'm still chewing on this after I finished it the other night, so the review might be different later on. The book is definitely enjoyable, and I don't think the story format or the story itself is as disjointed as some people claim. Essentially, I enjoy two key concepts that Generation A plays around with:

1) Development or Progression of Languages--Development from sounds and symbols into intricate sets of rules such as grammar, transition from oral traditions to written records and prints, and...more

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Jun 19, 2011 Joshua rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was the first book i've read from Douglas Coupland and i instantly fell in love with his style of writing. The main plot surrounds 5 beings from all over the world who are stung by bees in a time when bees are extinct. Each five characters get the chance to tell their perspective in individual chapters. I loved the characters and felt Coupland did a wonderful job of developing their profiles. As the story progresses, the characters are brought in for observations and questioning for a perio...more

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Dec 11, 2009 Giacomo rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Coupland fans

Shelves: american, fiction, novels

Coupland is far from his best here, patching together a cast of forgettable characters that mostly feel as simple narrative devices in an otherwise unplausible plot. Yes, yes, the social critique, the observation and bla bla bla, but a novel is supposed to deliver characters and plot as well as background, and "Generation A" fails at the former.
The story follows five twentysomethings from all over the world, living in a not-so-distant future where bees are extinct, fruits have all but disappeare...more Coupland is far from his best here, patching together a cast of forgettable characters that mostly feel as simple narrative devices in an otherwise unplausible plot. Yes, yes, the social critique, the observation and bla bla bla, but a novel is supposed to deliver characters and plot as well as background, and "Generation A" fails at the former.
The story follows five twentysomethings from all over the world, living in a not-so-distant future where bees are extinct, fruits have all but disappeared, and life is pretty boring. The older generation is longing for a disappeared past (including YouTube, which apparently required bees and fruits in order to run), and people survive on hi-tech antidepressants. When the five are suddenly stung by reborn bees, they are quickly "interned" and exhamined by the authorities, then briefly released and eventually led to a remote island in order to tell each other new stories and encounter their fate thanks to a couple of unplausible deus ex-machina (including the almighty Google).
Of the five (eventually six) characters, three are mostly caricatures; the lonely Tourette-suffering spinster, the lonely hepburn-ish NewZealander and the lonely alienated gamer are little more than (you guessed it) lonely figures with nothing much to say or do. It gets a bit better with the wasted American hunk and the clever call-center worker from India, albeit the points about them are hammered into the reader with unseen brutality ("they all think the Indian guy is stupid, but he's clever! and he's smart! did I tell you how clever he is? they call him Apu! But he's clever!"). One senses that Coupland would have wanted to write the entire novel from the Indian point of view, but chickened out (and rightly so, in my humble opinion) and had to go back to his classic anglo-pop settings, where he's more confident. The bad guy is from Europe, he's arrogant, works for Big Pharma, and gives Alan Rickman another job opportunity.
This said, there are a couple of good moments: the final twist about the intentions of "Alan Rickman" is quite horrifying, if completely disjointed from the rest of the novel; the five referring to themselves as "the Wonka children" is funny; the definition of "Craigs" should be added to wikipedia; and there is a lot of trademark Gen-X irony, as you would expect from the Gen-X author par excellence.
All considered, this book is not pulp, but it's hardly the stuff of dreams.(less)

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Nov 22, 2009 Sam rated it 2 of 5 stars

Generation A by Douglas Coupland
William Heinemann
ISBN: 978-0-434-01983-0
Sam North review

I was a big fan of Douglas Coupland, sticking with him to the brilliant millennium novel ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’. Somewhere around Miss Wyoming and All Families Are Psychotic my enthusiasm waned and he seemed to written nothing since except call centre novels. The trivia he had so successfully satirised in earlier work seemed to have overwhelmed him and he was exposed as just cold and cynical and although I bo...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Rogier added it

Generation A has its moments, and at least this book doesn't sound like a lecture like Hey Nostradamus did. The plot may be thin, and Douglas Coupland repeats himself yet again, but he repeats himself in an aesthetically passable manner and manages to outwit better writers. So this fast read is not a total waste of time, but it's a McBook anyway. Even the earth itself is turned into a piece of meat between two buns. JPod was a sequel of Microserfs that was better than version one, but Coupland d...more

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May 22, 2011 Tanya D rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm a fan of Mr. Coupland, but this was not a favorite. I really like the ideas about books and storytelling and the state of the modern world. And I like the overall idea with bees and hive mentality and isolation and everything. But it all seemed a bit clumsy. The storytelling section almost won me over; I probably liked all those stories more than the book as a whole. I hoped it would all eventually gel and get a rhythm, but it never did for me. I also kept thinking: wouldn't this be better i...more

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About Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland is Canadian, born on a Canadian Air Force base near Baden-Baden, Germany, on December 30, 1961. In 1965 his family moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he continues to live and work. Coupland has studied art and design in Vancouver, Canada, Milan, Italy and Sapporo, Japan. His first novel, Generation X, was published in March of 1991. Since then he has published nine novels and sever...more

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“What is prayer but a wish for the events in your life to string together to form a story -- something that makes some sense of events you know have meaning.” — 13 people liked it

“Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail.com.” — 13 people liked it

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