This was never a great book in the first place, just an okay one, and by the end it fell flat. Like the main characters i felt no hope for the future, nothing. The end of the book made absolutely no sense and there was no fulfilling explanation of what the point was at all. For instance, why were these people the only ones to survive? There is no answer, unless it’s just because they all knew Jared. It just reminded me even more strongly that there is no going back and undoing what has been done in the past so we have to do our best to make a life worth living.

Girlfriend in a Coma is broken into three parts. The first part is told by Richard. His high school sweetheart, Karen went into an unexplained coma the night she lost her virginity. For weeks before she has had strange dreams. Premonitions of what is to come. She feels that she has seen something in the future that she shouldn’t have seen and feels like she is going to be taken away – taken hostage because of it. And she is.

She was impregnated the first and only time she ever had sex and her daughter is borne to her while she is in her coma. She remains in an uneventful coma for nearly eighteen years. Her close network of friends try to grow up during this time. They try to find deeper meaning in their lives, but they are left unfulfilled. Richard especially is a mess. He’s living for the day that Karen wakes up from her coma instead of living for himself, for his daughter or for his friends.

The second part is in 3rd person. Karen wakes up from her coma on a day holds many coincidences for her friends. Good things keep happening to Richard. Two of her friends, Pam and Hamilton arrive at the hospital ODing on heroin. They have stereo drug-induced dreams which they later describe as video snapshots of the end of the world. Both dreams are identical.

Karen wakes up and tries to get on with her life and tries to recover, but she is haunted by the reason she went into her coma in the first place. Something’s going to happen. Soon. She gives a date to the events to come and waits.

The third part is told by a ghost named Jared. Jared went to high school with Karen, Richard and their group of friends. He died during their junior year of leukemia. The end of the world has come and leaves only Karen, her daughter, granddaughter and her network of friends behind. Jared is there to explain to them why this happened and what they can do to fix it.

I think this book had the potential to be so much more interesting. Instead it became preachy and weak. We have overtaken the Earth to a point beyond where it could repair itself if we weren’t here. We need to be content with our life and that means actually doing something with our life. Questioning our life. Questioning other’s lives.

I hated the ending. Again, I thought it was completely weak and it could have been so much more with more meaning. The author tries to make you think, but he does so in a way that he doesn’t explain anything at all.

There was something about the book I liked. As with Hey Nostradamus I was left with an eerie, haunting feeling and I think that’s good. There’s something about Douglas Coupland that I DO like, I just can’t put my finger on it. Both of the books seemed to dance around issues, leaving you to guess what happened. Neither book really had any resolution at all.

I’ll probably try one more Douglas Coupland book to see if I like this author or if he just leaves me unsatisfied.

I really enjoyed the book… until the ending. Disappointing ending.

Fantastic story. Unexpected. Read it.

This is a great book! I don’t see how anybody would say it was less than 5 stars! WTF?! The author is great at detail, makes you feel, see, smell everything, all just by reading words. It’s kind of Sci-Fi, kind of “Friends” on Crack, kind of That 70’s Show, and X-Files all rolled up in one.