JPod by Douglas Coupland

So I thought I should maybe read a book by Vancouver’s pride and joy, Douglas Coupland. And his latest book is called JPod and takes place in a gaming company in Vancouver so it sounded like an excellent bit of fun.

And how wrong I was. This book just wasn’t funny or clever and I didn’t enjoy it in the least. There was no plot, just random events, all characters are totally immoral, bland, illogical and unpleasant, there was absolutely zero character development and I just wished bad things for them. There were only couple of occasions that made me chuckle a bit, like the management-forced introduction of a charismatic talking turtle named Jeff to the ultra-realistic skating board game and... well, that was the only thing and I found amusing.

Main character Ethan was dead boring, spineless and moronic and even his humiliations didn’t make me feel better. And I hated his family too - I guess the intent was that I should have found Ethan’s meddling weed growing serial killing mother endearing but I thought she was just annoying and idiotic. I thought Coupland’s constant references to himself ("Oh God. I feel like a refugee from a Douglas Coupland novel.") and finally his appearance in the book just stupid and self-righteous, no matter how much he tried to emphasize what an asshole he is. The useless trivia in between chapters that he had ripped of from sides of cereal packets and stupid unfunny websites that everyone in any office/mailing list has seen two years ago were just unbearably mind-numbing. Normally when I’m listening to an audio book I always stop it when I need to talk to someone so I don’t miss anything, but JPod I just let run so would have to listen to less of it.

I can’t help but to compare this book to the last surrealistic office comedy that I read, Max Barry’s Company, and how much infinitely more interesting the characters where and how infinitely better the book was written. If you’re looking to get a light summer read about office politics, read Dilbert. If you’re looking for an ironic funny book dripping with black humour, go for Max Barry. But I wouldn’t recommend JPod to my worst enemy.

You can't add any more comments, but if you wish you can email the author.