Worst. Person. Ever.
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| Author | Douglas Coupland |
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| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Random House of Canada (Canada) |
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Publication date
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2013 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| ISBN | (first edition, hardback) |
| Preceded by | Player One |
Worst. Person. Ever. is the fourteenth novel by Douglas Coupland, published in 2013. The novel is the story of Raymond Gunt, an offensive and shocking narrator, and his journey from London through Los Angeles to Kiribati, an island in the Pacific Ocean, where he is to work on a reality television show. The novel focuses on this character's direct and inflammatory reflections on the world around him, and the characters he meets. In an interview with NPR, Coupland stated that the novel was written as an antidote to an "epidemic of earnestness", and that the book was motivated by the question of "why not just go against a trend, and write something that might actually damage a person's soul, if they read it?"
Raymond Gunt's journey begins in London, where in a meeting with his ex-wife, Fiona, she offers Raymond a job as a B-Unit Camera man on a reality TV show titled Survival. While preparing to leave for this journey, he befriends and hires a homeless man named Neal as an assistant, and prepares himself to deal with a British/American culture clash.
From this point in the novel, Raymond Gunt's journey is one of offense, crassness, and shock. He travels to Hawaii, then to Los Angeles, with each moment of his journey being ripe with strife, mostly of his own creation. The characters reflect on this cultural clash between the United States and Britain, and the trouble they get into because of it. Raymond also finds Sarah, his love interest. From there, Raymond and Neal leave for Kiribati, after a run-in with the American Military.
Raymond and Neal arrive in Kiribati to begin filming the reality TV series, when the world around them has degraded into a state of turmoil, which may or may not be their fault. International incidents play out while the characters explore the island. As world events spiral out of control, Raymond, his friends and family react and respond to the world changing around them.
The Scotsman described Worst as "profoundly bleak", while the Washington Post called it " hilarious" and "an erupting Vesuvius of abuse and profanity".The A.V. Club stated that it was "essentially an extended shaggy-dog story", and the Financial Times said that the "plot is a cavalcade of more or less random events", but emphasized that it "succeeds by virtue of its verbal energy, the brio of its invention, the snappiness with which successive gags and ever more appalling atrocities are piled on."
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