The gum Thief

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Call Number: Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Over the course of several months, two retail workers at an office supply superstore--Roger, a divorced, middle aged "aisles associate" at Staples, and his young co-worker, Bethany, an early twenty-something, former Goth--strike up a unique epistolary friendship.

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Not Coupland's Best submitted by Meginator on July 1, 2011, 8:00am While readers familiar with Coupland's work will find much here that is familiar (angst, sarcasm, irony), it isn't his best novel. The rapid-fire, multiple narrator epistolary format is difficult to get into at first, and while Coupland ably juggles the several points of view, the narrative voices all seem strangely similar. This inability to distinguish different characters makes them become tiresome after a while and, in a twist incredibly strange for a Coupland book, makes them ultimately ring hollow. Much of the novel alternates between flashes of brilliance and a strange tedium. For example, the embedded novel "Glove Pond" does reveal quite a bit about its in-book author, Roger, but its chapters slowly begin to take over "The Gum Thief" and strangle the main narrative. Add to this a thoroughly unsatisfying ending, and "The Gum Thief" is one of Coupland's lesser works, definitively in his vein but ultimately unsatisfying for readers who have come to expect more.