If you're dipping into Coupland, this is not the place to start. If you've read a lot of his books and feel like his bizarre writing style is like an old friend, then read it. ( )

Coupland is one of those writers whose style I find utterly abhorrent and at the same time so hilariously accurate that I always end up impressed. What I mean is that this book reads terribly because it must – it is a terribly accurate portrayal of how the protagonists would write. It's only because Coupland somehow, without you even realising it, lets you understand every mind-numbing spirit-crushing moment of the character's lives, that you know you are actually reading a damn fine book. Even the complicated book structure of novels written by characters who are themselves characters, leaving you with multiple concurrent storylines, are reduced to almost infantile simplicity. I felt like I was reading a tabloid most of the time, only to find at the end that I'd actually been reading an accurate and brilliantly observed piece of contemporary literature.

Like all of Coupland's characters who belong to generation X, Roger is perfect. The second main character, Bathany, is twenty years younger. Her character is not quite as believable. I appreciated the interplay of generations but somehow I don't think that Coupland really gets Gen-Y. ( )

I never thought I’d appreciate so much a novel that reminds me of the hellish year I spent working at Staples. I’d just dropped out of college, I had a somewhat older and incredibly controlling loser boyfriend and most of my ambitions around this time seem to have dropped off like the acquaintances of someone bound for the Witness Relocation Program. It wasn’t the best of times for me.

Having read The Gum Thief, I’m only now starting to suspect that it’s never the best of times for anybody, so long as they’re clothed in that red button-down, slaving away at a Staples somewhere.

Roger is a loser. He’s blown it big time, even before coming to work at Staples. While on his lunch breaks, he writes in a notebook, alternating between his own thoughts and pretending to be Bethany, his younger, Goth-obsessed coworker. What Roger really wants is to write Glove Pond, the novel that’s been circulating inside his mind for years, but he satiates his need to write by pretending to be a girl he sees daily but has never spoken to.

The Gum Thief is an epistolary novel, a narrative written completely in the style of personal or interpersonal communications. It joins the ranks of such books as Dracula, Fangland, The Feverhead and The Color Purple.

What starts out as just Roger’s eccentricity becomes more complex as Bethany finds the notebook and writes her own entries. From there, Roger is given the push he needs to begin putting his novel on paper, and Bethany’s mother Dee Dee, a high school classmate of Roger’s, begins writing letters as well. What started as the releasing of one strange man’s pressure valve takes on a life and gravity of its own as other Staples employees and even Roger’s ex wife begin to communicate, though not always in the notebook. There are letters, FedExes and notes slipped through mail slots galore, not to mention communications in the form of emails and manuscript critiques.

Quirky, interesting and definitely worth a read for anyone who’s ever worked a shitty job.

http://alookatabook.blogspot.com/2009... ( )

I had given up much hope for Coupland after the last few books I read of his (though I haven't read in order so it could just the ones I picked out) but this book proved to be worth the buy. It has been the first book in awhile that has made me pause while reading it and sort out how I feel about conversations the characters have. It is a depressing read but littered with numbers of gems (buttering!)that picked me up when I was starting to look to hard at the bottle of pills nearby. ( )

The Gum Thief is the story of two poor shlubs stuck in a typically Coupland scenario, a dead-end job stacking shelves at Staples. Roger is a 40-something divorcee, a frustrated writer whose life has fallen apart and whose only inspiration for writing comes from the staff and customers he meets at work. Bethany is the daughter one of Roger's former schoolmates, a lonely goth girl in her early 20s who becomes fascinated with Roger's writing, particularly his novel Glove Pond, an attempt at recapturing the style of John Cheever, the so-called "Chekhov of the suburbs". Bethany's attention encourages Roger to plough on with his book, proving that all a writer needs to be happy is a reader. She is his muse, yet in a pleasingly platonic sense (the obvious alternative is never pursued, despite the fears of Bethany's mother Dee Dee).

Read the full review at my blog. ( )