Bethany, the world is a beau­ti­ful place. Life is short, and yet it’s long. Being here is such a gift.
Excerpt from The Gum Thief

The syn­op­sis is not some­thing I can easily go through and so I shall keep it short. Roger is a pathetic excuse for a man who is in his 40’s and work­ing at Sta­ples. Bethany is a girl who’s a bit too old to be a Goth with no real direc­tion in life. She too works at Sta­ples. They con­nect through their writ­ing each other notes. Noth­ing roman­tic in them, but a con­nec­tion is forged. And that is the simple yet stun­ning basis of the book. From there it is a whirl­wind of real-​life and the human thought process. To add to it there is a story within the book called Glove Pond which I hon­estly wish was a book on its own, as well as the deeply moving sto­ries of dif­fer­ent slices of bread and toast.

I’m aware that I’m a fanboy of Dou­glas Cou­p­land. Anyone that looks at my clut­tered book­shelf will note that fairly quickly. I can say that I enjoy his writ­ing style and that gen­er­ally it isn’t for every­one. You need to appre­ci­ate the subtle (and some times not so subtle) out­ra­geous­ness his books tend to sport.On that note, The Gum Thief may be his most toned-​down novel ever. This is in no way a bad thing, and I find it unset­tling how real­is­tic the char­ac­ters feel. They truly feel like people you would utterly ignore walk­ing down the street while you think other thoughts. That’s exactly what he was going for, I think. He wanted to give depth to the two-​dimensional char­ac­ters we see walk­ing down the street, the ones that work in Sta­ples, those who move through life in obscurity.

It’s a story about noth­ing and every­thing all at once. It’s a snap­shot of the every day life of two people. Not two super humans or eccen­tric crazy-​folk. Just reg­u­lar people. It hooked me late in the book, but when I fin­ished it I wished that there had been hun­dreds of pages more. It’s heart-​warming in the ten­der­ness that the char­ac­ters por­tray towards each other. It’s crush­ing in watch­ing their lives go through dark patches and slide to the brink of noth­ing­ness. It’s tri­umphant in leav­ing you laugh­ing on one page and deeply moved the next.

If you can read Dou­glas Copeland’s work (there are those who can’t stand him, and that’s under­standible), you must read this. If you’re an actual fan of his, this may be the best thing I’ve ever read by him to date.

Depress­ing and beau­ti­ful. As cap­ti­vat­ing as watch­ing the sun go out.

9.5/10