Miss Wyoming : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Comedy of Manners For Generation X
Review: Douglas Coupland is the writer whose book, Generation X, was so smart, hip and slightly disillusioned that it coined a phrase to describe a generation of smart, hip and slightly disillusioned Americans.

This book, Miss Wyoming, follows the parallel stories of Susan Colgate and John Lodge Johnson and encompasses everything from the American beauty pageant culture to near death experiences.

Susan Colgate is a former pageant "work horse" and low-budget television star. Typical of pageant hopefuls and television aspirants, she embodies a surgically-enhanced, plastic kind of unnaturally-endowed beauty and, as would be expected, her life unfolds much like a trite and manipulative soap storyline. One racing toward a definitely unhappy end.

Susan, however, is a survivor. She has survived a manipulative and grasping stage mother, a plane crash in which she was the only survivor, and a year in which she "went along" with the story of her own apparent death.

John's life hasn't been a whole lot better. The son of a downwardly-mobile and rapidly-fading socialite and her constantly-disappearing husband, John endured a childhood filled with endless illness and depression only to come into his own as a successful maker of films.

Success for John, though, is narrowly defined and means the constant ricochet from one stimulus-induced high to another. For John, the bigger the high, the more thrilling the thrill, and no amount of money is too much to spend.

His "thrilling" lifestyle, however, comes to an abrupt crash landing when he falls prey to a particularly virulent virus and experiences an astral projection, the likes of which he has previously only dreamed.

It is when Susan and John meet that Miss Wyoming really takes off.

Coupland is one of those rare authors whose subject matter suits his writing style perfectly. Yes, much of it is "mind candy" but it is mind candy written with such an infectious joyousness that it is difficult for even the most jaded reader to resist its allure. His characters are victims of the too-much-too-often, freeze-dried, quick-fix excess, yet they are never trite and never fail to amuse.

The plot ricochets from one event to another, much like the characters, and they do their best to struggle and survive and even, at times, connect.

Miss Wyoming is definitely satire and it is modern satire of the highest order. Surprisingly so. The patron saint of satire, Oscar Wilde, defined the genre as being not only witty, succinct and accurate, but also imbued with a love of humanity and all its quirks. Coupland's writing shows this same generosity and love of his fellow man and it is this quality, more than any other, that pulls Miss Wyoming far above other novels in the genre.

What could be more ripe for criticism than the youth-and-beauty-worshiping, celebrity-obsessed, consumerist culture of America today? Yet, Coupland embraces this culture with a sweetness that brings his flawed and failing but always-hanging-in-there characters to life.

Our priorities, says Coupland, are genuinely laughable, but we can and sometimes do, transcend them. While lampooning the excesses of America today, Coupland still manages to cherish his fellow man, quirks and all. It is this very innocence and love that, in the end, make Miss Wyoming a very hip, very smart and very compassionate book to read.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre
Review: Some descriptions were cute and unusual ("his eyes were the pale blue colour of sun-bleached parking tickets" - p.5), others were just plain ridiculous ("the doctor and nurse inspected his body like it was a skimpy Christmas tree" - p. 98). Overall the book was ok. Not "ok good or ok crap", just ok. I liked the way the storyline skillfully jumped from place to place, without ever confusing the reader. However it read more like a pre-teen novel, its inhabitants caricatures rather than real people. A pleasant read, yet highly forgettable.

Rating:
Summary: Read it if you want something offbeat by accessible
Review: This book came to me at the perfect time. I like quirky, unusual stories that poke fun at the establishment and make me laugh. I was in the mood for such a book and lucked out when I read "Miss Wyoming." The story was thoroughly entertaining. While it may seem like a no-brainer to make fun of a beauty queen and her white-trash mom, Coupland keeps you entertained with a chain of events that is anything but predictable. He knows that these characters could and probably do exist, but the combination of all these weirdos in one book and the journey they take is laugh-out-loud funny. No one takes themselves too seriously, a keen point which keeps the story fresh. The characters know they have foibles, personality quirks and such, but they face life and deal with it with results that are fun to watch from the sidelines. His writing is clear and keeps the momentum going. It was a perfect book to read before bed or while sitting in the sunshine.