Worst. Person. Ever.
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3.4 • 29 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Raymond Gunt likes to think of himself as a pretty decent guy—he believes in karma, and helping his fellow man, and all that other good stuff. Sure, he can be foulmouthed, occasionally misogynistic, and can just generally rub people the wrong way—through no fault of his own! So with all the positive energy he’s creating, it’s a little perplexing to consider the recent downward spiral his life has taken…Could the universe be trying to tell him something?
A B-unit cameraman with no immediate employment prospects, Gunt decides to accept his ex-wife Fiona’s offer to shoot a Survivor-style reality show on an obscure island in the Pacific. With his upwardly failing sidekick, Neal, in tow, Gunt somehow suffers multiple comas and unjust imprisonment, is forced to reenact the “Angry Dance” from the movie Billy Elliot, and finds himself at the center of a nuclear war—among other tribulations and humiliations.
A razor-sharp portrait of a morally bankrupt, gleefully wicked modern man, Worst. Person. Ever. is a side-splittingly funny and gloriously filthy new novel from acclaimed author Douglas Coupland. A deeply unworthy book about a dreadful human being with absolutely no redeeming social value, it’s guaranteed to brighten up your day.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Meet Raymond Gunt: the meanest and most narcissistic, debased, and oblivious individual on the face of the planet. Douglas Coupland clearly relished conjuring up this nasty protagonist, whose nonstop rants about everything from American nutrition to Duran Duran are vulgar and wickedly funny. When Ray’s ex-wife gets him a job as a cameraperson on the hit reality show Survival, he embarks on an insane journey to reach the South Pacific island of Kiribati. Not unlike Coupland's bestselling debut novel, Generation X, Worst. Person. Ever. is essentially a vehicle for him to skewer popular culture. The picture he paints isn’t pretty, but Gunt’s Wiki-like asides about everything from Cinnabon to the British comedy show Mr. Bean have an almost transcendent honesty.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Raymond Gunt, the narrator of Coupland's (Generation A) latest, is an unemployed cameraman and a horrible human being. He goes begging to his ex-wife Fiona, owner of a West London casting agency. Fi offers him work on the American reality program Survival, and despite his suspicion that she's just trying to embarrass him, Raymond accepts, after which he recruits local homeless man Neal to be his assistant/slave for the shoot. So begins Raymond's vile, tirade-laced adventure to Kiribati, a remote island in the Pacific and the location of the shoot. He is a fabulous monster, with nothing and no one safe from his vitriol. Raymond torments the obese, faces multiple incarcerations, makes leering advances at every woman crossing his path, and plays a role in a potentially globe-threatening nuclear event and all this before even reaching the island. Coupland skewers a pop world's growing insensibilities, and his protagonist is a charming villain whom readers will likely root for, even as he's insulting them.
