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Review [published December 2007]
Douglas Coupland: The Gum Thief
Dan Coxon
In recent years Douglas Coupland has achieved a
remarkably consistent output. It’s not that every novel
he’s written has been a masterpiece – no writer manages
that – but rather that his great novels have been
regularly interspersed with his less satisfying ones. Microserfs,
Miss Wyoming, Hey Nostradamus! and JPod
all felt like significant contributions to an impressive
body of work; in between, however, we were handed
Girlfriend In A Coma, All Families Are Psychotic and
Eleanor Rigby, all worthy in their own right but none
of them causing much of a stir on the literary scene
(maybe Mr Coupland should stop naming books after
pop songs).
This pattern suggests that The Gum Thief should be a
disappointment, and it certainly doesn’t feel like one of
his finest. Relating the relatively humdrum tale of two
‘associates’ in a Staples stationary superstore, it often
sounds like a soap opera rather than the latest offering
from one of contemporary literature’s most intriguing
voices. To dismiss it out of hand would be a mistake,
however, as its relatively mundane surface hides an
intriguing study of the epistolary form – and a com-
mentary on the nature of the novel itself.
The Gum Thief opens in typical epistolary-novel
style, swapping back and forth between two characters:
Bethany, a young, disillusioned Goth working in the
Staples store; and Roger, a divorced, quiet loner who
spends his days restocking the shelves and walking his
dog. Beth discovers that Roger has been writing a diary
from her point of view, and once the initial weirdness
has passed she becomes intrigued by the fact that he’s
imagined her so accurately.
So far, so simple. Coupland then throws another element
into the mix: Roger is writing a novel himself, the
curiously-titled Glove Pond, and the letters between
Roger and Bethany are interspersed with excerpts
from his own novel. Glove Pond is a woefully shallow
and amateurish attempt at the form, but something in
it touches Bethany, and, like her, we feel compelled
to read on. As the friendship between the co-workers
develops, so the twists of Glove Pond begin to reflect
their lives, albeit with an often-hilarious distortion.
Just as we begin to get used to this format Coupland
hurls another character’s voice into the fray, and he
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