The Gum Thief: A Novel

By Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland's artistic novel-think Clerks meets Who's scared of Virginia Woolf?-is the tale of a unprecedented epistolary dating among Roger and Bethany, very assorted, yet unusually attached, "aisles affiliates" at Staples. Watch as their lives spread along Roger's work-in-progress, the oddly titled Glove Pond. A raucous story of 4 teachers, malfunctioning marriages, and one rotten ceremonial dinner, Roger's opus is a Cheever-style novella long gone horribly fallacious. yet as key characters migrate into and out of its pages, Glove Pond turns into an anchor of Roger's unsettled-and unsettling-life.

Coupland electrifies us on each web page of this witty, clever, and unforgettable novel. Love, loss of life, and everlasting friendship can all transpire the place we least count on them...and even after tragedy turns out to have wiped your human slate fresh, tales can slowly rebuild you.

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AughGHHH! Oh! That was once— That was once— Do it back. Oh God, they by no means advised us approximately this, again within the loaf. Jesus, I’m crumbling all over. I don’t care. Mnmmmglmph! Ahhhhh . .. hot, drizzling rivulets soak my being; molten, swirling, sun-coloured puddles drench my cracked, scabby and burnt skin—my dying so close to. Already i will feel tooth coming my manner, and but the terror is long gone. i believe unfastened! i believe soiled! i think submissive! i believe . . . i believe . . . i believe . . . . . . the tip. C+ Bethany, I didn’t completely believe like i used to be being buttered, like i actually was once the toast. As a author, you'll want to empathize. At Thursday’s workshop, i would like you to hear many of the different butterings that would be learn aloud. They’ll offer you a greater consider on the right way to hook up with your protagonist. i believe that, jointly, we are going to arrive at a pleasing inventive answer. Bethany Roger, You’ve ignored 5 days at paintings now. Why are you skipping paintings rather a lot? Are you in poor health? i think ridiculous leaving correspondence on your basement suite’s mail slot, yet I’ve acquired no goal of knocking in your door. Leaving you this be aware is the level of my act of achieving out to you. My idea is that you’re now not unwell in any respect. i feel you’re sitting within your house, getting hosed and cursing the universe, most likely simply because you’re mad at your ex-wife and her attorney. i believe you’re facing a nasty patch, yet I additionally imagine you’ll be out of it quickly, so I’m going to jot down this and stick it via your door after which now not fear approximately you any further. You’re under no circumstances lacking whatever at paintings, yet I did this one freaky factor you could locate interesting—and of attainable use to you as a novelist. After going to go to Kyle’s grandmother’s grave, I obtained to pondering dying greater than ordinary, and that i determine that sometime you’ll write the phrases the top and Glove Pond may be entire. That’s obtained to be type of like loss of life, don’t you're thinking that? and in contrast to genuine existence, in a publication, you recognize precisely whilst the top goes to take place. and since you recognize whilst the top is coming, you’ll might be consider a few kind of strain close to the tip, like, Holy shit! This puppy’s going to be complete in probably 5 pages! No 3 pages! Augh! the tip is close to! the top is close to! And so here’s my thought: I determine that the psychological strain of smashing right into a book’s finish needs to squeeze whatever out of a author. It needs to strength them to cough up a few kind of crucial fact, simply because it’s now or by no means. With this in brain, I took the bus to the library and went into the fiction part and bought a cart and selected 100 novels at random from the cabinets: potboilers, Nobel Prize winners, sci-fi, romance—everything. and that i had a pile of cash and that i went and photocopied the final pages of every booklet after which I went to a espresso store and skim these hundred final pages trying to find a standard topic, and also you comprehend what? i discovered one. It’s no longer in each booklet, yet it’s in such a lot books. It’s this: while a ebook ends, the characters are usually relocating both in the direction of or clear of a resource of sunshine— literally—like sporting a candle right into a darkish room or operating a pink mild at an intersection or commencing curtains or falling right into a good or—this record is going on.

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