Still, the plot of Generation A, which in another writer’s hands might gallop into geopolitical-thriller territory, plays harmony to trademark Couplandian insight: As Diana is taken away from her house, now covered in an isolation bubble, she says “For the first time in my life, the future felt futuristic”; for Julien, the sting took away a life “like a video game that resets to zero every time I wake up.” It’s in these details, not the overall picture, that readers will find the generation of which Vonnegut spoke, though as with Coupland’s Generation X, it isn’t a complete portrait. An initially puzzling backdrop gives the narrative just enough momentum to nose these characters into a place where they can explore how much they have in common.

If Generation X gave us “tales for an accelerated culture,” then Generation A is its natural extension, offering tales for the information overloaded. The bite-sized chapters and witty tone will appeal to those with perpetual attention defi cits, and bits of pop culture sprinkled liberally throughout will attract readers highly attuned to the current zeitgeist. Coupland clearly understands the minds of the current generation – young people who have never known a time without the Internet – and plays on their desire to jump continually from one subject to the next.

Generation A feels like a slow-motion demonstration of the ways in which technology is destroying story, and not the enacted triumph of story over technology that Coupland so clearly wishes it to be.