A sharp, strange Coupland novel about aftermath of a school shooting.

The book moves through multiple voices, circling one violent moment and the lives warped around it — faith, guilt, love, performance, blame, and the shitty human habit of trying to make catastrophe mean something.

This is Coupland in his more serious register, but still with that clipped, bright, late-capitalist weirdness he does so well: pop culture, suburbia, religion, youth, media noise, emotional numbness, all pressed together until they start giving off smoke. Not as playful as Microserfs or Generation X, more bleak and searching. A good one for readers interested in post-Columbine fiction, belief after violence, and the spiritual poverty of modern life. Very early-2000s in the best and worst ways: clean surfaces, psychic rot underneath.

Paperback. Harper Perennial, 2004 edition. First published in the UK by Flamingo in 2003. Includes “P.S. Insights, interviews and more” material. Light visible handling/marks to cover, but looks readable and structurally fine from photos.