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continues to do this until the novel’s final pages: the
traditional back-and-forth of the epistolary form gradually
fractures into a whole chorus of voices, many of
them pulling in opposite directions. We hear from
Bethany’s mother DeeDee, who coincidentally went
to school with Roger, and from Roger’s bitter ex-wife
Joan – among others. There’s even a series of attempts
to write a story from the point of view of a piece of
toast, as Bethany flexes her own creative muscles.
If this sounds rather messy and incoherent, then
that’s because it often is. With so many different voices
pulling us back and forth it sometimes becomes difficult
to discern between them, and Coupland doesn’t
always manage to conjure up a distinctive voice for
every new character.
It’s the novel-within-a-novel that gives us the key
to this intricate web, however, and makes the most
memorable contribution to The Gum Thief. Glove
Pond shows us how the best fiction (and even some of
the worst) draws upon the writer’s experiences in real
life, twisting and morphing them to create something
new. It shows us that any creative work, no matter
how amateurish or muddled, has the potential to touch
somebody, or even change a life. And most importantly,
it never fails to entertain, as its characters stagger from
one disaster to another, like the affairs of the American
literati reinterpreted by the cast of Dynasty.
Like Glove Pond, The Gum Thief is a flawed novel.
It confuses as much as it illuminates, and Doug Coupland’s
experiments with the epistolary form don’t
always come off. In Bethany and Roger, however,
he has created another pair of Coupland greats, two
people muddling through modern life in any way they
can – with the occasional epiphany thrown in along the
way. The Gum Thief may not be perfect, but it’s still a
damned good read. �
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