‘Worst. Person. Ever.’: Not Coupland’s best book ever

I read Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel 'Generation X” while I was in college. An X-er myself, I loved the book, and I remember thinking that Coupland had captured an essential ... something ... about my generation. Each of his next three books - 'Shampoo Planet,” 'Life After God,” and 'Microserfs” - struck me as equally relevant and insightful.

I stuck with him after that, though I missed a book here and there. But with the exception of 2009's 'Generation A,” I haven't found his later work nearly as satisfying as those first four books. I picked up his latest novel with high hopes, but, 'Worst. Person. Ever.” (Blue Rider Press, 300 pages, $26.95), is certainly not his best book ever.

'Worst. Person. Ever.” calls to mind Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle” (with its exotic island and apocalyptic crisis), Mark Leyner's 'Et Tu, Babe” (with its overblown, narcissistic narrator), and Douglas Adams' 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” (with its explanatory, often winkingly edgy, asides). But Coupland's story of a man's misadventures while attempting to work on a 'Survivor”-style reality show is merely ribald without being revealing.

Coupland is on firm satirical ground as he skewers the makers and viewers of reality TV. But the notion that folks should attend to real world events instead of manipulated 'reality” isn't enough to prop up this novel. And while Coupland gives us, in narrator Raymond Gunt, a fellow who lives up to the title's dubious promise, the character isn't the sort of anti-hero you like despite yourself. And that means it's hard to like this book.