Reviews of JPod

"A work in which [Douglas Coupland's] familiar misgivings about life on the technological cusp are again invoked, but also one in which the skills he's been developing as a novelist pay off, where his satirical streak and his social consciousness finally stop fooling around with each other and settle down together ... JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away.

To Coupland's credit, the technologically sophisticated but socially alienated universe that he anticipated in 1995 is an even more tangible and complicated entity in 2006 — a time when people really do speak in regurgitated sound bites from The Simpsons, and are labeled autistic simply because they are shy, and are granted preposterous job descriptions like being part of a "world-building team" when they possess little control over the world in which they live — and that gives him license to revisit this territory in JPod. If it's more difficult to recognize the profundity of his insights this time, we should still appreciate Coupland for his consistency in making them. I know every Big Mac I've eaten from Key West to Vancouver has probably tasted the same, but I'd be lying if I said they haven't all been damned tasty."  New York Times Review of Books (click here to read more - subscription required)

'Douglas Coupland is ... possibly the most gifted exegete of North American mass culture writing today ... JPod is without a doubt his strongest, best-observed novel since Microserfs' Observer (click here to read more)

'I loved it… I haven’t laughed so much for a long time… highly enjoyable' Piers Plowright, BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review 

'I admired it enormously… I found myself enjoying every minute of it… buy the book and get some conceptual art free' Liz Jensen, BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review

'Utterly beguiling… hilariously funny. He reminds me of Evelyn Waugh in the way that he blends pointless nonsense with matters of real point.' Tom Sutcliffe, BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review

'People who don’t really like reading books are going to have a lot of fun with this one.' Dame Liz Forgan, BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review

Jpod by Douglas Coupland ‘Introducing Generation Xbox: a whole new breed of techno-geeks from the master of the modern cult classic. Very evil … Very funny’ Publishing News

‘Douglas Coupland once again captures the zeitgeist in his latest novel about the techno-geek underworld’ Harper’s Bazaar

‘This bright, shiny, magpie-friendly package shows a reliably unreliable narrator unafraid of experimentation and canonical rule-breaking having the time of his jet-setting, coolhunting life’ I-D

‘Blending biting satire and fast-paced farce with high technology and low life, JPod reflects modern living in a darkly humorous glass’ Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

‘This is vintage Coupland, a spookily normalised account of an insane world, and it’s great fun to read, and gently scary’ Evening Standard

‘This is a wonderfully inventive book, fizzing with wit and black humour … It’s good to have [Coupland] back’ Sunday Tribune

‘Ever since his era-defining debut, Generation X, in 1991, Coupland has been synonymous with amoral, aimless young drifters subsumed by the mindless excesses of American capitalism. True to form, JPod focuses on a group of PlayStation game developers in Vancouver who talk aimlessly about which day of the week is the best, Ronald McDonald’s sexuality and breakfast cereals’ Financial Times Summer Reads

‘Jpod is a blackly comic tale of life in the age of google, and it’s Coupland’s best book in years… A wonderfully inventive book, fizzing with wit and black humour.’ Image Magazine

‘A very traditional comic writer — as loyal to his mileu as Damon Runyon or PG Wodehouse.’ Toby Litt, The Times

‘JPod clearly says something about an age when the geeks shall inherit the earth — but mainly, with the wealth of farcical invention underlying its bland, sheeny surface, it’s just very funny.’ Sunday Times

‘In every way, JPod is a bigger more elaborate version of his previous work… I used to think that Coupland was too benign a novelist. Now he feels like one of the most nihilistic: a change that has improved his fiction immeasurably.’ Matt Thorne, Independent

‘A clever tale of modern amorality … With pages of typographical gymnastics, a plot that’s one long madcap caper and smart-alec cameo appearances by one Douglas Coupland, this could easily grate — but somehow there’s real heart in there. Fans won’t be disappointed.’ Marie Claire

‘[A] hysterical portrait of workers at a Vancouver computer games company. Coupland conjures a compelling amoral universe populated by corporate lackeys, Chinese people smugglers, amateur marijuana farmers and actors manqués’ GQ

‘JPod is … a dazzling comic novel, confirming that … there is on current form no funnier novelist writing in English’ Literary Review

‘Humming with life and very, very funny’ Scottish Sunday Herald

‘[It has a] wealth of farcical invention, … its … very funny’ Sunday Times

‘Like Kurt Vonnegut...Coupland is giving the youth of North America the benefit of the doubt.’ Washington Post

‘The perfect vehicle for [Coupland's] funny and poignant evocations of near-term nostalgia...there is brilliance at work in JPod. Not to mention more LOLs than you could shake a bong at. Mom must be so proud.’ LA Times

‘Zeitgeist surfer Douglas Coupland downloads his brain into JPod.’ Vanity Fair

‘In his new novel, Douglas Coupland, the acerbic novelist who first mocked the cubicle farm in Microserfs, lampoons his own media-rich, contemporary world with such candor that one of his characters turns out to be a preening, asinine novelist...named Douglas Coupland...Coupland was once tagged as the voice of a generation for his inventive articulation of generational angst in his first novel, Generation X. It's to his credit that in JPod he's still nimble enough to take the post-modern man — too young for Boomer nostalgia and too old for youthful idealism - and drown his sorrows in a willful, joyful satire that revels in the same cultural conventions that it sends up.’ Rocky Mountain News

‘Perhaps it's time to admire [Coupland's] virtuoso tone and how he has refined it over 11 novels. The master ironist just might redefine E.M. Forster's famous dictate 'only connect' for the Google age. No need to invent a haircut if he keeps pulling that off.’ USA Today

‘A fantastic book ... JPod is the story of the children of the 1970s growing up and making peace with their unfulfilling jobs, finding meaning in connections with like-minded souls, and reveling in the oddities of 21st century existence. And Coupland paints that picture with more understanding, more awareness, and more evil humor than anyone else could’ Buffalo News

‘Coupland is mining territory that has been largely ignored by the literary set...the novel shows Coupland did his homework.’ Washington Post

‘No one has Coupland's ability to spot cultural outliersthe little gems of nonsense that can both jar you and impart joy. Coupland is his generation's most interesting curator.’ Slate.com
‘Hilarious, maddening, overstuffed’ Atlanta Journal-Constitution

'Coupland remains king of the perfectly placed pop-culture detail' MSNBC.com