Five years on... worth a revisit.While the title and format of the recalls Coupland's first work, Generation X, this novel shows with deftness and subtly how the author has grown in the nearly twenty years since X and A. Gone are the quirky marginal definitions that seeped into pop culture (e.g., McJob, poverty jet set, and so on) but present is the speculative fiction that cropped up in both Life After God and All Families are Psychotic.Full disclosure here: I'm a Canadian ex-pat in England who has a signed first edition copy of this book when it first came out in hardback. I've buried my treasures (of which my copy of Gen-A is one) back in Canada but reached for this Kindle edition during a particularly dull and dreary English day. What does this matter? How might these facts help you in a review: there's a comfort and strangeness in this book. A feeling of displacement and home for lack of a better term, there is a lonely worldliness in this novel.Five years on from its initial publication this book feels just as much or more of the moment than it did in 2009 and in light of Coupland's most recent effort (which I found disappointing and not of this moment) Worst. Person. Ever. If you're thinking of revisiting Doug's world, do yourself a favor and start here. If you're new to Coupland, it'd be interesting to read this novel first and then go back to Gen X.The fluid prose will drag you in and entertain you, but keep an eye out for some themes that'll feel all too familiar. Social-media's insidious pervasiveness. Big pharma. Big data. Globalization. They're all here and they're entertain instead of pedantic.3