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In Douglas Coupland’s ingenious novel—sort of a Clerks-meets-Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf—we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged “aisles associate” at a Staples outlet, condemned to restocking reams of twenty-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life. And then there’s Roger’s co-worker Bethany, who’s at the end of her Goth phase, and young enough to be looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in Aisle Six.
One day, Bethany comes across Roger’s notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy she’s never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her—and spookily, he is getting her right. She also learns he has a tragedy in his past—and suddenly he no longer seems like just a paper-stocking robot with a name tag.
These two retail workers strike up a peculiar and touching epistolary relationship, reminding us that love, death and eternal friendship can all transpire where we least expect them. Through a complex layering of narratives, The Gum Thief highlights number-one bestselling author Douglas Coupland’s eye for the comedy, loneliness and strange comforts of contemporary life.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 18, 2009 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780307371386
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780307371386
- File size: 222 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from June 18, 2007
Two misfits find common ground and a unique, surreal friendship via unspoken words in Coupland’s latest (after JPod
), a fine return to form. In the two years since his wife’s (nonfatal) cancer was diagnosed, Roger Thorpe has devolved into a dejected, hard-drinking, divorced father and the oldest employee “by a fair margin” at Staples. A frustrated novelist to boot, Roger considers himself “lost,” continually haunted by dreams of missed opportunities and a long ago car accident that claimed four friends. His younger, disgruntled goth co-worker, Bethany Twain, one day discovers Roger’s diary—filled with mock re-imaginings of her thoughts and feelings—in the break room. She lays down a “supreme challenge” for them both to write diary entries to each other, but neither is allowed to acknowledge the other around the store. Through exchanged hopes and dreams, customer stories, world views and cautionary revelations (“time speeds up in a terrifying manner in your mid-thirties”), the pair become intimately acquainted before things unravel for both. Running parallel to the epistolary narrative are chapters from Roger’s novel, Glove Pond
, which begins having much in common with the larger narrative it’s enclosed in. Coupland shines, the story is humorous, frenetic, focused and curiously affecting.
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