Book 20 - Miss Wyoming

Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland was a pretty good book. I don't know if it is because I have been writing these for so long or what, but I don't really have a whole lot to say about it but I am sure I will come up with something as I type along.

I will start off my directing you to some of my other reviews of Coupland books, always a good place to start. There's Microserfs, Generation A, Girlfriend in a Coma, and Player One. Some I loved and some were only so-so, but overall I am becoming a pretty big Coupland fan, and I love that he is local here to Vancouver.

Miss Wyoming falls was one of the better ones, but I didn't really love it. It is a tale of two people who have both abandoned their lives. There is the titular Miss Wyoming, Susan Colgate a former child pageant star and 80s TV actress. She walks away unscathed as the only survivor of a plane crash. She stays away for around a year, leaving the world thinking she is dead. The other is John Johnson, a blockbuster film producer who sells off all his possessions and lives as a homeless man after a near death experience.

The two meet, and an instant connection is made then yet again one of them disappears. The book takes us back and forth through the events of the present search for that person as well as through the past events of note in their time away from their lives, and the events that lead up to them making that radical choice.

Overall it was an enjoyable read, just not too noteworthy. One thing that irked me though was the cover, as seen above, I thought there would be some Las Vegas connection but sadly there was none. That is a poor design choice, but not reflective of the quality of the book.