Generation A by Douglas Coupland

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge

It is in the future (the near future according to the book jacket) and the bees have all disappeared.  Then randomly (or not as it turns out) five people across the globe are stung.  Each of them are then brought into special isolation rooms to be studied to find out why they were stung and how this information could be used to bring back the bees.  I found this part of the book interesting but then it took an odd turn.  After the stingees are sent back to their normal lives, they are again gathered up, and this time brought together on a remote island and told to tell stories to each other.  Then there are a bunch of their short stories in the book (which I’m sure had some deep meaning to the story but it wasn’t readily apparent and I just didn’t feel like thinking that hard to figure it out).    Then after all that weirdness, there’s some zombie references and then you find out why the bees disappeared and how the scientists plan on getting them back.

So, how did I feel about this book?  I’m still not sure.  It’s taken me a while to get to this review because I’m still deciding what I think.  I did enjoy the first half and I was satisfied with the ending, but the middle part was strange.  And I can’t decide if the beginning and the ending make up for the strangness of the middle. you know?

As always with Coupland, though, there were definitely parts that made me laugh out loud and many of his characters were pretty witty which made for enjoyable reading even in the weird parts.  I think overall it was a decent book and it wasn’t too long or deep so I can see past the middle part (which wasn’t bad – just different and isn’t that just typical Coupland?)

Note: I’m labelling this as dystopian fiction because it kind of has that feel, but it’s not typical dystopian either.