Girlfriend in a Coma
A Novel
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Initial publish date
- Nov 2008
- Category
- Occult & Supernatural, Medical, Magical Realism, Medical, Contemporary, General, Friendship, Ghost, Romantic, General, Literary
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Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780061624254
- Publish Date
- Nov 2008
- List Price
- $21.00
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780062105950
- Publish Date
- Jun 2011
- List Price
- $11.99
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
On a snowy Friday night in 1979, just hours after making love for the first time, Richard's girlfriend, high school senior Karen Ann McNeil, falls into a coma. Nine months later she gives birth to their daughter, Megan. As Karen sleeps through the next seventeen years, Richard and their circle of friends reside in an emotional purgatory, passing through a variety of careers—modeling, film special effects, medicine, demolition—before finally reuniting on a conspiracy-driven super-natural television series. But real life grows as surreal as their TV show as Richard and his friends await Karen's reawakening . . . and the subsequent apocalypse.
About the author
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Douglas Coupland was born on a Canadian NATO base in Germany and raised in Vancouver, where he still resides. Among his best-selling novels are Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Polaroids From The Dead, Microserfs, Miss Wyoming, Hey Nostradamus! and Eleanor Rigby, altogether in print in some 40 countries. Coupland also exhibits his sculpture in galleries around the world, indulging in design experiments that include everything from launching collections of furniture to futurological consulting for Stephen Spielberg.
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Editorial Reviews
“... Coupland’s dialogue is flip and fresh.” — New York magazine
“...a message of hope and a challenge to...cynicism.” — USA Today
“His strongest novel to date.” — People
“Part Stephen King, part It’s a Wonderful Life, with a little of his own Generation X thrown in, Coupland’s immensely readable . . . novel shows him scared of the future and sounding the alarm for the millennium.” — Booklist
“To call Coupland the John Bunyon of his set would not be hyperbole, especially in light of his newest book, the...fantastical Girlfriend in a Coma, which at times approaches a jeremiad worthy of Kurt Vonnegut...[A] rousingly old-fashioned and genuinely spooky morality play.” — The Washington Post