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From The Wall Street Journal (March 20, 1998)

by Erica Schacter

Think "Beverly Hills 90210" but in Vancouver. One December night in 1979, high-school sweethearts Karen and Richard share their first sexual experience before meeting the rest of the gang -- Wendy, Linus, Pam and Hamilton -- at a senior-year "house wrecker." After two drinks and complaints of having bizarre visions, Karen suddenly falls into a deep coma. What had Karen seen? Who cares? She gets to sleep soundly while the reader must endure pages describing the monotonous, drug-abusing, jobless existence of the friends she's left behind. Then, just as I was falling into a coma of my own -- boom -- she wakes up.

It's now 1997, 18 years later, and Karen finds herself in a changed world: "Cloning. Life on Mars. Velcro. Charles and Diana. MAC cosmetics . . . and fat free everything." The images are vintage Coupland, showing as he did in "Generation X" his familiarity with and sense of humor about the times. But catchy phrases go only so far; he does not put his plot where his mouth is. A series of apocalyptic events ensues -- darkness, heavy lightning, erupting volcanoes, people dropping like flies into an endless slumber. Unfortunately, there are a few survivors: the "Beverly Hills" troop, alive, awake and free to share their pseudo-deep thoughts on the meaning of life.