Generation A (book)
Generation A is the thirteenth novel from Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland. It is dedicated to Anne Collins and takes place in a near future, in a world in which bees have become extinct. The novel is told with a shifting-frame narrative perspective, shifting between the novel's five main protagonists. The novel mirrors the style of Coupland's first novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, which is also a framed narrative. On September 30, 2009, Generation A was announced as a finalist for The Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize by The Writer's Trust of Canada.
Synopsis
Coupland's website has a synopsis of the novel:Characters
; Zack Lammle; Samantha Tolliver
; Julien Picard
; Diana Beaton
; Harj Vetharanayan
Style
The novel "mirrors the style" of Coupland's breakthrough first novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. The story is told through non-numbered chapters, just as the first was. The book is told with a shifting narrative perspective. Each chapter title announces whose perspective the rest of the chapter will be in. The book rotates in the order of Harj, Zack, Samantha, Julien, and Diana for most of the work. Some changes happen due to the plot.The novel is also, like Generation X, a framed narrative. However, as this novel mirrors the style, the framed narrative style is also reflected. The first novel has stories in a frame, where the stories are the important part of the tale. In this novel, the stories help to bring out the characters. Throughout the novel, the importance of stories in a person's life is discussed, and in this novel, the stories are important only so much as they bring out and expand on the character's stories.