I absolutely loved this book! I found it hard to put down. I highly recommend reading it! You won’t be disappointed.

Odd, quirky, compelling short tales. Douglas Coupland never ceases to amaze with his constant exploration of new literary styles.

In March 2020, once the initial shock of the pandemic lockdown had passed, I started to think about the impact of people staying at home as they would no longer see “strangers” regularly. I worried that the insularity of not spending time together in public places could lead to a diminishment of empathy for others we’ve never met.

I’ve long loved to look at people in public places (especially on public transit) and wonder about their lives. In Douglas Coupland’s Binge, I learned that there is a word for this. Coupland quotes John Koenig who, in his YouTube series (and soon to be book) The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, has come up with exactly the word for this. He’s coined “sonder” which is defined as: “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”

In Binge, Coupland writes short short stories (yes, I meant to use the word twice because these short stories are short) about a wide range of characters. It is, in essence, the literary equivalent of “sonder”. All told in first person, we are usually plunked down right in the middle of events, immediately immersed and intimate with someone we’ve never met. A handful of pages later, we’re starting all over again with someone new. Until, surprisingly, someone familiar steps into view.

Much like scrolling social media where you catch snippets of people’s lives and may start to see webs of connection, the stories in Binge start to interconnect. It’s never so much as to become one of those “novels told in stories” kind of things, but it has the feeling of exploring ecosystems. Some connections are obvious, others are subtle, most help us to see situations from a different perspective.

I’ve always thought of Douglas Coupland as the zeitgeisty, digitally connected, popular culture voice of my generation right from the time he wrote Generation X. While on paper, both Coupland and I are considered “boomers” (we were both born in the early 1960s), that tag has never felt right and his first book spoke to me in a way I was pretty sure it didn’t resonate with those born in the 50s. Like Microserfs (which I loaned to someone and never got back) and J-Pod, Coupland has always been interested in how the digital world impacts us. In Binge, familiar memes, expressions, and technologies have become a seamless part of the fabric of the characters’ lives. They aren’t the story, but they do move things along.

Coupland is not for everyone. He can be irreverent bordering on offensive, graphic bordering on revolting, unflinching to the point of disturbing. He has a dark humour that some will find gruesome (bodies stuffed into car-top cargo racks feature prominently) but which made me laugh out loud more than once. Like the characters of film/tv writer Aaron Sorkin, Coupland’s characters have a way of speaking and looking at the world. They often lack a degree of self-awareness but they are wry, dry, and sarcastic. They are, for want of a better word, Couplandesque.

Coupland writes stories which feel simultaneously specific and universal. He inhabits many different kinds of people which always makes me wary when I know he can’t have the lived experience of all of the many different characters who people these stories (BIPOC, people with disabilities, and so on) and so at times, I squirmed a little unsure of what to make of it. But while he examines the ridiculous, the unpleasant, and the cruel aspects of humans, he also subtly tugs us towards empathy. For the most part, Coupland humanizes his characters, making us have that “sonder”, that understanding that every person you see is living a full life. You’re left with the thought that we are all just trying to get through; we’re not all doing a good or kind job of it, but the villains aren’t always who you think they are.

Did I binge this book? Of course I did.

With thanks to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Content warnings for suicide, opiod abuse, violent death, and probably a lot of other stuff too.]

Douglas Coupland is a really important authour to me. Aside from the fact that we share the same birthday (and I will miss no opportunity to mention that) he introduced a whole new world of literature for me. When I look back on it, I believe that his work helped shape me into the reader that I am today.

Coupland was the first example I read who mixed contemporary life with a little out there, inexplicable, supernatural-ish action. It also helped that he is from the same area as me and often wrote about it.

The first time I remember waiting for a book to be published, going to the store to buy it on release day and reading it in one sitting was Girlfriend In a Coma in 1998. I can still picture the boyfriend’s parents’ couch where I planted myself and didn’t get up until I’d turned the final page.

So, you see, Coupland and I have a history of quick reads and Binge was no different. Even when I tried to pace myself, I was largely unsuccessful. It was a joy to experience the feeling of wanting to plow through all 265-ish pages, only now I wish I’d stretched it further. Binge is an appropriate title for this anthology.

Given that this is Coupland’s first book since 2013, I was delighted to get reacquainted with him work. It struck me that his writing has a very unique feeling to it, but when you look at it word for word, it’s really hard to pinpoint what exactly sets it apart from others. I’ve never been someone who wants to see too much behind the curtain so I’m happy to bask in the tone and the story.

Binge boasts sixty stories and, yes, it’s a fact that there are that many. What isn’t said, or even noted in any of the reviews that I’ve read, is that they are frequently overlapping. Characters featured in their own stand alone story reappear in one about someone else and so on and so on. The stories are interwoven, the themes overlap and multiply and that results in a completely enjoyable and thought-provoking reading experience.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to read this book. It's out on October 5th and is available for preorder now.