Barbara Black 7 BOOK REVIEW Life After God, by Douglas . Coupland. Simon and Schuster . Inc.,.353 PP-, hardcover. --CUSE ME, but geta ‘life OK? So there’s no “God; no jobs, no inno- cence, no perfect families —- welcome to adulthood. The real world was never depict-. ‘ ed.in 1970s sitcoms. 7 That was one of my senti- . frients after reading. Life After , God, by once-North : ; Vancouverite Douglas ° ‘Coupland; otherwise known as ° the self-proclaimed guru of ‘Generation Xo «Why the glib. tone?. His book - makes me'mad hecause it’s so Close to being something, to inéaning ‘something, but it gets. lost if its.own moroseness about © -the human (read Generation x). : condition..Call it..." McExistentialism. ; -.. Coupland begins this story. . : collection with the blanket. state-:: w ment “you are the first genera-* tion raised without religion,” which is not entirely true. More true would be: “you are the first generation raised with snippets of various world religions of equal validity.” At any rate, this lack of reli- gion, coupled with an informa- tion-overdosed, consumer-based society leaves the Generation Xers in a state of spiritual vacu- ity. We hunger for meaning in a world of disjointed bytes. In a perverse sort of way | enjoyed reading Life After God - because it reminded me of my frame of mind'in my 20s when |’ . discovered Sartre, Kafka and all _the ‘other life-is-meaningless sorts: Also, many of the stories are set in North Vancouver or environs, and Coupland has a sympathetic eye for the North Shore environment. He also. weaves in references to pop cul- ture of the 1970s | thought were ” fost in the recesses of my mind. in these stories there is a cer- tain wise, mean-spiritedness, which rips away the fairy-tale. coating of life. Coupland cuts .. through to the weariness we all . feel in recreating ourselves day to day and year to. year. In “Little: Creatures” a young father, tired . of his nomadic lifestyle, tells his child animal stories tinged with ~ his own disillusionment —- a dog. with a drinking problem and a squirrel who had to get‘a job at the peanut-butter factory. . When the child asks where Gh giveaway balloons for children people come from the father gets away with answering “from back east.” with animals leads him to his awn musings on creatures, His child’s preoccupation including humans — musings which are sincere but of the juvenile Dear Diary variety. Coupland is well aware that the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we the “real” world. Ah, but that is . the illusion, isn’t it? To walk around thinking life will happen 7 any moment now and then, ° - whammo — you're cashing in your RRSP. All that is left are memories of childhood when life - was as easy as swinging froma ° tree branch. This sentiment per- vades Life After God and Coupland looks at it from a vari- 10,000 stumps and tree branches — a million tree rings of time, all burning, all sizzling — a shock-. . ing amount of fire like a lake of... fire; so much flames that the rain turned to steam before it hit the embers.” He stands in the rain watching the “fire under the ocean ... like a secret-you just . can’t keep hidden ariy longer.” He does not find his sister. . - - will be are either gross delusions’ or worse, self-fulfilling. In “My Hotel Year,” the hustler Danny actually enjoys getting stabbed. He croons, “Man, when that blade first digs into you it makes your soul Jeap out of your body tor just a second, like a salmon jumping out of a river.” What he really wants is to.get shot. His dreams are eventually fulfilled. Itis as if Couplana’s average; often emotionally stunted char- acters have something profound to say but are incapable of doing so. Sometimes reading Life After God is like reading an artless poem about life and love but knowing that the person who created it wrote it with the utmost sincerity and depth of feeling. .. ; In “My Hotel Year” the narra- : tor remembers seeing a crow standing in a puddle “motion- less, the’sky reflected on its-sur- face so that it looked as though the crow was standing on the sky.” His friend then confides that she believes there is a secret world under the surface of our own world and that that world is , Subway is the fresh alternative er