Written by Douglas Coupland
“Meeting Anna-Louise was like finding a stranger’s shopping list on the mall floor and realizing there are other, more interesting diets than your own. It was the first time I ever felt incomplete.”
Shampoo Planet was Douglas Coupland’s second novel, and it shows the evolution of his writing with poetic clarity.
Although Generation X had been enormously popular and enormously influential, it was far too smug and certain of its own hip-factor, and its own place in the zeitgeist. The writing reflected the ennui of the characters and their view of the world, which, in some ways, was brilliant…but in others, far too self-referential for its own good.
Shampoo Planet demonstrates Coupland moving up a gear. His characters are more honest (especially with themselves), and far more at home in their pop-culture niches. The situations in the novel become more bizzare, yet simultaneously, far more fascinating and relevant. They speak with truer voices, and the emotional impact of each and ever character crisis is related with far more confidence. Shampoo Planet hums with the infant attitude that would flower in books such as JPod and The Gum Thief.
It’s not perfect (as is the case with most evolution). Shampoo Planet’s achilles heel is its hyper-active sensibility and tone. It moves at warp speed, but it can verge on being overly-surreal. At any moment, if feels as if the story - and the characters - are ready to fly off the rails and crash with a spectacular thud! But the final few chapters of the book pull a rabbit out of the hat, by suddenly veering into a surprisingly honest and emotional conclusion, where the protagonists actually face some of their deepest fears…and come through the fire with renewed identities.
Shampoo Planet is an archival taste of a Douglas Coupland who was still a work-in-progress. It’s far from his best work, but the leap from Generation X to Shampoo Planet is monumental, and lays the groundwork for future literary genius. You’ll devour the book in a single sitting, and you’ll come through to the conclusion with (1) a smile, (2) a desire to read more Coupland, and (3) the satisfaction of knowing the best was yet to come…
