The Gum Thief
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The first and only story of love and looming apocalypse set in the aisles of an office supply superstore.
In Douglas Coupland’s ingenious new novel we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged “aisles associate” at a Staples outlet, condemned to restocking reams of 20-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life, and his co-worker Bethany, who’s at the end of her Goth phase and young enough to be dreading a lifetime of replenishing the Crayola boutique in Aisle 6. One day Bethany comes across Roger’s notebook in the staff room. She reads it and discovers that this old guy who she has never considered as quite human is writing mock diaries pretending to be her—and he is getting it right. Intrigued, she realizes that Roger is more than a spooky old paper-stocking robot with a name tag, and the two retail workers strike up a touching, if peculiar, epistolary relationship.
On every page of this witty, wise and unforgettable novel Coupland reminds us that love, death and eternal friendship can all transpire where we least expect them. And that even after tragedy seems to have wiped your human slate clean, stories can slowly rebuild you.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two misfits find common ground and a unique, surreal friendship via unspoken words in Coupland's latest (after JPod), a fine return to form. In the two years since his wife's (nonfatal) cancer was diagnosed, Roger Thorpe has devolved into a dejected, hard-drinking, divorced father and the oldest employee "by a fair margin" at Staples. A frustrated novelist to boot, Roger considers himself "lost," continually haunted by dreams of missed opportunities and a long ago car accident that claimed four friends. His younger, disgruntled goth co-worker, Bethany Twain, one day discovers Roger's diary filled with mock re-imaginings of her thoughts and feelings in the break room. She lays down a "supreme challenge" for them both to write diary entries to each other, but neither is allowed to acknowledge the other around the store. Through exchanged hopes and dreams, customer stories, world views and cautionary revelations ("time speeds up in a terrifying manner in your mid-thirties"), the pair become intimately acquainted before things unravel for both. Running parallel to the epistolary narrative are chapters from Roger's novel, Glove Pond, which begins having much in common with the larger narrative it's enclosed in. Coupland shines, the story is humorous, frenetic, focused and curiously affecting.
