Gum Thief

In Douglas Coupland's ingenious new novel - a kind of "Clerks" meets "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" - we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged 'Aisles Associate' at a Staples superstore, condemned to restocking reams of 20lb bond paper for the rest of his life. Roger's coworker, Bethany, in her early 20s and approaching the end of her Goth phase, faces fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in Aisle Six. One day, Bethany discovers Roger's notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she discovers that this old guy who she's never considered to be quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her - and spookily, he is getting her right. These two retail workers then strike up an extraordinary epistolary relationship. Watch as their lives unfold alongside Roger's work-in-progress, the oddly titled "Glove Pond", a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong. The first and only story of love and looming apocalypse set in the aisles of an office supply superstore, "The Gum Thief" reveals the comedy, loneliness and strange comforts of contemporary life.

(Bookdata)