Synopsis
“Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Syracuse University commencement address May 8, 1994
A brilliant, timely and very Couplandesque novel about honey bees and the world we may soon live in. Once again, Douglas Coupland captures the spirit of a generation….
In the near future bees are extinct — until one autumn when five people are stung in different places around the world. This shared experience unites them in a way they never could have imagined.
Generation A mirrors 1991’s Generation X. It explores new ways of looking at the act of reading and storytelling in a digital world.
Publishers Weekly
Coupland's thematic sequel to Generation X strives once more to explore and define the edges of group identity through a Decameron-style storytelling marathon. Taking place in a near-future in which bees have become inexplicably extinct, five young men and women become the subjects of fame and scientific curiosity when they're the first people in five years to suffer a sting. Zack, an Iowa farmer, is the first and is soon followed by Harj in Sri Lanka, Samantha in New Zealand, Diana in Canada and Julien, who resides in Paris but lives primarily in World of Warcraft. Captured by a clandestine organization headed by a man named Serge, the unlikely group is eventually moved to a remote island, where Serge compels them to recite stories. Always in the background are rumblings of the hyperaddictive drug Solon, which holds its users in a perpetual present. Coupland juggles some fascinating ideas, and the story circle holds equal parts humor and revelation, though the revolving crew of narrators—particularly the women—can be difficult to distinguish from one another. Despite its flaws, this book will interest readers in search of an intelligent look at pop and digital culture. (Dec.)