Worst. Person. Ever.

Starred review from February 10, 2014
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.

April 1, 2014
A secondary-unit camera operator is recruited by a production company to help film a reality TV show on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. Guess what? He's not a very nice person. It's just possible that Coupland (Player One, 2010, etc.) might be angry with us. The wunderkind of the 1990s was dazzling in his early works, with provocative think pieces like Girlfriend in a Coma (1998), but the last decade has been hit or miss. For his latest, Coupland has apparently decided to go full-on gonzo, throwing every stylistic technique he's ever employed into the mix and centering it all on a profane, drug-addled bastard repellent enough to piss off a congregation of saints. Raymond Gunt is our titular antihero, hired by his ghastly ex-wife, Fiona, to help film Survival, an elimination show being shot on the tiny island of Kiribati. Since the foul-tempered Gunt has no friends, he literally picks a homeless guy named Neal off the street and hires him to be his assistant. If you're expecting a raunchy but good-natured comedy, you'd be wrong. Chapter by chapter, Coupland ratchets up the insanity. Neal chats up Cameron Diaz in first class while Gunt fumes in coach. Drugs are ingested regularly, and blackouts are frequent. Gunt puts himself into an allergy-induced coma. Twice. Later, he's held hostage by a spiteful Army officer and made to dance "The Angry Dance" from the musical Billy Elliot. And then there's that small matter of triggering a nuclear war. "Well then. We've all been in a pickle at least once in our lives, haven't we?" Gunt asks. "One is born, one grows up. One gets in a pickle. The pickle is resolved, and then one dies. Snap!" It's this kind of smarmy voice that makes the novel hard to take in large doses, but readers with strong stomachs may find some caustic humor here. Did we need transgressive fiction offered as arch comedy? It's a bit like Irvine Welsh writing a sitcom.

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February 1, 2014

Easily offended readers might want to take a pass on this ironic novel, as it playfully seeks to transgress most boundaries. Coming after a slew of books beyond the wildly popular Generation X, Coupland's latest shows how life brings out the worst in people. The story follows the hilarious misadventures of an unlikable man named Ray on his way to a job as a cameraman on a well-known tropical island reality show. He provokes and is attacked by a homeless man, Neal, whom he then magnanimously employs as his personal assistant. The two bond in male fellowship largely interspersed with the hearty use of the f-word, as well as many other more colorful terms. Their absurd escapades range from involvement in the impromptu dropping of an atomic bomb to casual philosophical musing on the merits of bestiality. VERDICT Not for the faint of heart, this is a masterpiece of politically incorrect wit. Some readers will be laughing out loud while others will recoil in horror. A must for those with a resilient sense of humor.--Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos Lib., CA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2014
Down-on-his-luck Raymond Gunt fancies himself a Jason Bourne type, although he is basically a contemptuous, lustful, self-centered arse. He may, in fact, be the worst person ever, although he certainly has lots of competition. Raymond's luck appears to be improving when he is hired on as a cameraman shooting young lovelies in a Survivor-like TV show on the Pacific island of Kiribati. The catch is that he will be working for Americans (so it's bound to be shit), and Kiribati turns out to be anything but a tropical paradise. Ray never gets a break: his flight is horrible; he gets detained by security; he suffers extreme reactions to macadamia nuts; he eats bugs; he gets banished from the island. He's even blamed for an escalating nuclear crisis. He'd almost be sympathetic if he wasn't the worst person ever. Comically satirical in his depiction of the blistering superficiality and inanity of modern pop culture, Coupland (Generation X, 1991) here wallows in the carnivalesque as he indulges in gross-out humor and his characters' bad behavior, but, unfortunately, it all comes off as misanthropic and unpleasant.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)