JPod
Douglas Coupland
(Bloomsbury, New York: 2006)
Distributed by Holtzbrinck Publishers.
READ: September - October 2007
Six video game designer co-workers, whose last names all start with the letter "J" (hence the title), doomed to work forever on the same video game that will never be released.
It sounded vaguely like the premise of Microserfs, but I am pleased to say that the only thing the two books have in common is that the protagonist works in the high-tech world. JPod is so different from Microserfs. It is a book about a surreal, strange world, where morals are constantly shifting and things are never quite what they seem. It just kept getting weirder and weirder and weirder, until finally, partway through, I started wondering where the book was derailing to. Randal, who was also reading it at the same time but was further ahead than me, told me, "Just keep reading. You'll see." It got right back on track and the weirdness somehow all made sense in the end.
CBC Television has made a television series out of JPod, and I'm curious to see how it will work in this format.* I don't know how they will make episodes out of the book, or whether it will just be a spin-off, so to speak, loosely related to the events in the book.
Anyway, I was hooked start to finish. A great read.
* Unfortunately, I don't have cable, so lacking any good bunny-ears, I'm going to just have to wait for it to come out on DVD or something. It starts January 8, 2008 (tomorrow, incidentally).
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