Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland
Two down, two to go, and hopefully we’re back onto an upswing. The abovementioned novel is the second of the four Douglas Coupland novels I have been unable to bring myself to read for years. Having forced my way through Girlfriend in a Coma and having found it no better than I remembered or expected, Miss Wyoming was in some senses light relief, in that at least we were spared the Apocalypse.
While there were definite transcendent moments that brought to mind his earlier work, I had to put it down the first time I read it because the emotional ravages one of the two major characters were put through were so extreme, and seemed so heartbreaking. This didn’t strike me so much this time – it turned out I had, as predicted, packed up reading at more or less the nadir. But the plot was, in its way, as far-fetched and unsatisfying as its predecessor, despite being, in my view, generally a better book.
It seems to me to be the same old theme of redemption through love and through shedding the redundant that was done to perfection in Microserfs and which seems to be getting a more or less extreme rerun in each subsequent book. Moreover, the ending of this one is every bit as unsatisfactory as Girlfriend in a Coma. In both, the narrative just stops dead after the life-changing experience and there is no hint of whether the characters can make a go of their new lives. I must look at Microserfs actually, and see how that compares.
But maybe, reading this back, I am being rather negative. This was a book I am glad to have read, although I can’t see myself returning to it with the anticipation of much of the early stuff. The experiments with time and with narrative are fascinating, and I think Coupland carries this difficult trick off. It read very much like ‘classic Coupland’ in a way that GiaC didn’t – that dragged instead of soaring. This at least took off.
Now I plunge into one of those copies of All Families are Psychotic with the rocket-ship cover which the author is reputed to hate. More soon.