{"id":1954,"date":"2014-08-04T21:09:05","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T05:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1954"},"modified":"2014-08-04T21:09:05","modified_gmt":"2014-08-05T05:09:05","slug":"review-worst-person-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1954","title":{"rendered":"Review: Worst. Person. Ever."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It didn&#8217;t take long to read Douglas Coupland&#8217;s <em>Worst. Person. Ever. <\/em>He has a breezy, snarky style, turns a clever phrase, and keeps his plot twisting and turning alluringly.\u00a0 The short chapters are like potato chips, easy to down and pick up the next. It would have been a great book to have on a transcontinental flight.<\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of similarities between <em>Person<\/em> and Irvine Welsh&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/BBC\/mouldering99.html#m99-z\"><em>Filth<\/em><\/a>. Both feature reprobates from the United Kingdom.\u00a0 They take some joy in taking the reader on a tour of the seedy side of their point of view character&#8217;s psyche, and both take no prisoners doing it.\u00a0 Coupland, however, is writing a more superficial book.\u00a0 There&#8217;s none of the subtext and misdirection that turns <em>Filth<\/em> on a dime in the last third.\u00a0 None of these characters change meaningfully, nor do they ever garner much sympathy.<\/p>\n<p>There are pleasures to be had in <em>Person<\/em>, for sure.\u00a0 This is some quality snark and some snappy dialogue. The coincidences bring a demented bit of Dickens into the mix, and there are moments of enjoyable satire.\u00a0 But as a whole, Coupland&#8217;s targets are a bit to east to skewer and his brush too broad for me.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, his characters are all pretty insufferable.\u00a0 While it&#8217;s always clear who he&#8217;d like us to be rooting for, I wasn&#8217;t ever convinced.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t connect with any of these characters.\u00a0 Hiaasen also writes some broad and often unlikeable characters, but he always sinks enough of a hook in me so that I have a stake in their fate.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t much care what happens to any of the characters in <em>Person<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t regret reading <em>Person<\/em> at all &#8211; it was good fun while it lasted.\u00a0 I suspect I won&#8217;t remember it in a month, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It didn&#8217;t take long to read Douglas Coupland&#8217;s Worst. Person. Ever. He has a breezy, snarky style, turns a clever phrase, and keeps his plot twisting and turning alluringly.\u00a0 The short chapters are like potato chips, easy to down and pick up the next. It would have been a great book to have on a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1957,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions\/1957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}