Thursday, January 21, 2010

Generation A

This novel is set in a near future world much like our own, where bees have suddenly abandoned their hives and gone extinct and many plants must be hand pollinated to produce fruits and seeds. An apple is a luxury.
Without warning, five unconnected young people are each stung by a bee. What was each doing to attract such a miraculous occurence?
In the United States, Zack was creating perverse crop art in an combine in an Iowa cornfield.
In Canada, Diana, a dental hygienist with Tourette's, was being excommunicated from her conservative church.
In France, Julien was skipping school at the Sorbonne to play World of Warcraft continuously.
In New Zealand, Samantha was thinking about her parents and taking a photo of sandwich bread.
In Sri Lanka, Harj, a tsunami orphan, was talking to a reporter while working at an Abercrombie and Fitch call center.
In this age of cell phone photos and instant communication, the governments, military and scientist react quickly, isolating each of the five to study them, and then bringing them together to find commonalities. These five people are instant celebrities; the hope of the world is pinned on their ability to be stung by an insect believed to be extinct. Can they bring back the bees? Or does the French scientist have another agenda altogether?
Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture helped popularize the term Generation X for the group of people born after the baby boom, who were young adults in the 1980s.
His new novel, Generation A, takes its title from a 1994 Kurt Vonnegut commencement speech, which is used as an epigraph before the story begins. This being Douglas Coupland, what starts as an intriguing concept gets even weirder when the five people are brought together, yet the social commentary and excellent, innovative writing style will keep you turning the pages even when you begin to doubt where the story is headed.
If you like reading and storytelling and computer technology and sexuality and pop culture, or you have ever read and enjoyed Douglas Coupland before, this book could be a good match for you.
I had to renew it twice but I read all 297 pages

Also recently read Love on Cue by Catherine Hapka - one of the better teen romances of late -- 274 pages.

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