Douglas Coupland.

Hmmm. Generation X was marvellous, Shampoo Planet had some fine moments, Microserfs was okay. Girlfriend in a Coma was tedious self-indulgent crap and that's where I stop checking out the "Coup" section in my bookstore. The idea, surely, as a published author is to get better? Having said that, the "What do you think of when you look at the sun?" passage in Generation X is a masterful piece of writing. And as you know, I am very unforgiving of authors who waste my money by writing within themselves.

good call, Ralph. seems like you've got my reading habits a bit too sussed! think i agree pretty much with Andrew. Girlfriend in a ... was way too self-indulgent though it did have a great opening. i haven't been put off though and it's just a matter of time and money before i get my hands on All Families ... Coupland puts together an easy blend of mysticism, congeniality, lostness and diffused intensity and is worth reading, even when he isn't on form. in fact, for me, no one gets to grips with complex, unresolved and undirected emotional states like American (or, in C's case, Canadian) writers, and i wonder if it isn't something about the flexibility of American-English that makes them so expert at conjuring 'feeling' on the page.

"You should make love in a satellite dish. Not only do you get an enormous sense of well-being, but also a great tan" Or words to that effect, from Shampoo Planet.

I wrote a review on this book for abc tales online magazine if anyone is interested. I agree that Generation X was brilliant and that Shampoo Planet was also v.good. Microserfs had it's moments. Though Miss Wyoming was so easy to read and almost seemed like a screenplay. Girlfriend in a coma was good up until the end of the world and that crap angel stuff. I figure that he didn't know how to end it. I would have finished it with the end of the world and no-one surviving. The thing with 'all families are psychotic' is that Coup seems to be stuck in this soap opera style writing and has gone backwards with this novel. He definitely writes within himself. At times it is funny and clever and at other times it seems like a really bad Channel 5 made-for-tv movie. Basically all his characters seem to be alike in every novel. I think he can't get out of his Gen X mentality. That, or his publishers only want him to write that sort of thing.

There's one moment in Polaroids from the Dead, talking about celebrity when he seems to transcend that and grope towards something more fierce and interesting, but it slips away. Even then, it isn't a patch on the interview Martin Amis wrote in the Observer on Madonna when he actually failed to meet her.