Rent JPod

Synopsis

Cluttered with pop-culture minutiae and self-consciously geeky references, this frantically metafictional slacker chronicle serves as an early 21-century update of the zeitgeist that Douglas Coupland explored so famously in MICROSERFS. Thirty-year-old Ethan Jarlewski works in JPod (a slice of cubicle-farm consisting of co-workers whose last names all begin with 'J'), coding for a Vancouver video-game company. Professionally, he's getting to know his office crush, Kaitlin, by playing pranks on her; as well as just generally goofing off to avoid the unpalatable task of inserting a friendly turtle character into what was supposed to be a cutting-edge skateboarding game. Personally, he's attempting (and failing) to fend off the endless demands of his family: his clingy, marijuana-growing mother (who accidentally electrocuted an extortionist biker); his needy, would-be actor and amateur ballroom-dancer father (currently conducting an affair with one of Ethan's former high-school classmates); and his wheeler-dealer older brother (who's stashing smuggled Chinese immigrants in Ethan's apartment). His life is clearly that of a Douglas Coupland character; it's no wonder, then, that Coupland himself enters the novel and takes an interest in Ethan and his co-workers.

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