A world shrunk into the day to day banality of people caught in the entropy of an office stationary store. Kind of like the searing, uncomfortable TV comedy The Office but fuelled with poetry rather than embarrassment. A miscalculation of man/woman power, people thrown into a social mix-up, misplaced personalities, unrewarded expressions of a super defined loyalty to nothing: This is a who am I, I am, Am I calamity of sadness and hopelessness.

The Author Douglas Coupland is whatever you want him to be to my generation, sometime guru, sometime mentor, sometime pop culture revisionist, romantic, everyman, genius etc and the list goes on and on and on. I’m one of his readers. I look forward to his books like I used to look forward to a new movie Richard Linklater; this makes me a fan, and still being able to be a fan at this stage of my life means a lot to me, being a fan creates a world devoid of cynicism, you’re actually engaged with the idea, the process, the themes and are prepared to go down fighting the cause: a fan is a willing participant in something they feel is meant for them, that’s a nice feeling, and there’s not a lot of nice feeling about in this crummy badly lit world. His books touch on socio-political itches that I can’t scratch, and he scratches for me, sometimes getting rid of the irritation, sometimes making it worse. He writes character, turns them into people then vacuum packs them I words always somehow making them likeable, melancholy, lost but clearly not going to give up. This is a book about being a writer, a over of fiction based on a reality. It’s a satire , a love letter and a book of revelation all baked into a memorable collection of e-mails and notes. Read it fast then read it again. It’s fine literary meanderings are a joy.