The eponymous heroine of Miss Wyoming is one Susan Colgate, a teen beauty queen and low-rent soap actress. Dragooned into show business by her demonically pushy, hillbilly mother, Susan has hit rock bottom by the time Douglas Coupland's seventh book begins. But when she finds herself the sole survivor of an airplane crash, this "low-grade onboard celebrity" takes the opportunity to start all over again: She felt like a ghost. She tried to find her bodily remains there in the wreckage and was unable to do so.... Then she was lost in a crowd of local onlookers and trucks, parping sirens and ambulances. She picked her way out of the melee and found a newly paved suburban road that she followed away from the wreck into the folds of a housing development. She had survived, and now she needed sanctuary and silence. She's not, of course, the only Hollywood burnout who'd like to vanish into thin air. Her opposite number, a producer of big-budget, no-brainer action flicks named John Johnson, stages a similar disappearing act. After a near-death experience, in the course of which he is treated to a vision of Susan's face, he roams the western badlands. And even after his return to L.A., Johnson is determined to unravel the mystery of this woman's fate.

Throughout, Coupland displays his usual gift for capturing the absurdities of modern existence. The distinctive minutiae of our age--junk mail and fast food, sitcoms and Singapore slings, and the "shop fronts bigger and brighter and more powerful than they needed to be"--come to vivid, funny life in this author's hands. And while Susan and John occupy center stage, Coupland is just as generous with his peripheral characters. A scriptwriter and his supernaturally intelligent girlfriend, a recluse who spends his evening generating Internet rumours--all manage to be blessed and cursed, numbed by their pointless existences but full of humanity when put to the test. Picture Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut collaborating on a Tinseltown version of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and you come halfway to grasping Coupland's brand of thoughtful, supremely funny storytelling. --Matthew Baylis


From Publishers Weekly
Since Generation X, Coupland has been read more for his trend-setting insights than his novelistic dexterity. In his sixth novel, however, he loses even that edge by jumping on the already tired beauty-pageant-bashing bandwagon. Susan Colgate's mother, Marilyn, is a viciously competitive stage mom who micromanages Susan into teen stardom as Miss Wyoming. But Susan revolts against maternal pressure by dramatically refusing the Miss USA Teen crown, and independently makes her way to Hollywood, where she enjoys her 15 minutes of fame on an '80s sitcom, Meet the Blooms. Her career sliding downhill after that, she goes to New York for an audition; on the way back to L.A., the plane crashes. Thrown clear of the wreckage, Susan survives unscathed, but she allows the world to think that she is dead. Later, she claims she had amnesia, but in reality, she shacked up with a former beauty pageant judge and had a baby. Now 28, Susan has kept the child secret, but her mother eventually intuits its existence. Susan feels she is washed up at 28, until she meets John Johnson, once a powerful hit-making Hollywood producer, who gave away all his possessions and literally walked away from Hollywood, living like a tramp for six months. Now John is baby-stepping back into the real world, supported by his business partner, Ivan. Meeting Susan, he recognizes her as the face he saw in a fever hallucination just before his walkabout. But on the eve of their second date, Susan disappears, so he, another Colgate fan and the fan's unbelievably smart girlfriend search for Susan and her secret child. Coupland's writing is frustratingly uneven, sometimes deftly jokey, other times hopelessly muddled ("her body was mechanically deboned with relief") and his characters, for all their spiritual crises, are about as introspective as cell phones. The plot twists satisfyingly in several places, but in general, Coupland should leave the star-crossed celeb genre to Judith Krantz. 60,000 first printing; 8-city author tour. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Anyone who has read or even heard about Coupland's novels (Generation X, Girlfriend in a Coma) knows that they are firmly entrenched in late 20th-century Americana, paying close attention to the popular culture and how it shapes the people immersed in it. His latest begins with a happy ending: having disowned their respective celebrity careers, fallen starlet Susan Colgate and burnt-out movie producer John Johnson meet at a restaurant and make a love match. Then Coupland rewinds to see how the pair got to that point, detailing Susan's life as a reluctant teen beauty queen and John's reckless, hedonistic lifestyle while steering his characters through a morass of 1990s signposts: near-death experiences, child kidnapping, Internet rumor mongering, and dead celebrity shrines. It would be easy to take pot shots at these people on the fringe, but Coupland portrays them sympathetically, and the chaotic tale is told pretty simply (if not chronologically). A little edge or satire might have made it more interesting, but this is lightweight fun that will find some receptive readers. For larger collections.AMarc A. Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Tom Shone
If Kerouac had been a couch potato, this is the kind of book he might have written.


From AudioFile
Much like the Hollywood culture Coupland writes about, this latest work features leaps, flashbacks and complicated dance steps. This novel, which follows the bumpy lives of Susan and John, two movie-industry refugees, is the perfect material for the narration team of Sharon Williams and Aaron Frye. The readers capture the lonesome, sarcastic and hopeful tones of their respective characters, deftly trading off as Susan and John trace the story of their relationship. Williams and Frye take an intricately woven plot and give it life with their performances. Characters have distinct personalities, and Coupland's story is delivered with style and humor, while the theme of love remains intact. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
Couplands fifth novel modishly matures the generation he christened (Generation X, 1991) via a lonely pair of thirtyish Hollywood burnouts in search of meaning. Devotees will recognize the characteristic blend of hip cultural references, ambient low-grade humor, and an unravishing love tale involving dead-enders living in hope of hope. The romance is a fragmented affair that resolves itself in this concluding, nullifying phrase: Whatever came to them next would mercifully erase the creatures theyd already become as they crawled along the plastic radiant way. What leads up to that F. Scott Fitzgerald envoi is the story of John Johnson, a maker of mega-selling trash flicks for teens, who falls ill, has a vision, and leaves Hollywood behind for the joys of dumpster diving in the Southwest; and Susan Colgate, a veteran of kiddie beauty pageants whose generous half-hour of sitcom fame has ended, and whose airliner takes a nosedive into a field in the Midwest, leaving her miraculously unharmed. The two meet in a restaurant, take a walk down Sunset in the afternoon, and are mutually enchanted. Despite their efforts to meet again, flashbacks, flashforwards, and sitcom misfortunes intervene. Susies mom Marilyn, broke, deprived of an airline settlement, and abandoned by her resentful daughter, kidnaps Susies infant Eugenea child conceived and born during her anonymous lost year immediately after the plane crashand John, with the help of young lovers Ryan and Vanessa, begins his search for Susie. They all end up in Wyoming, mother and daughter reconciled, mother and infant reunited, and Susie and John heading out for the plastic radiant way. Couplands frenetic, free-associative sensibility is no match for frenetic, free-associative Hollywood; he tells us nothing about our movie capital we havent heard before. (First printing of 60,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Douglas Coupland continues to register the buzz of his generation    with a fidelity that should shame most professional Zeitgeist chasers."   -- Jay McInerney, New York Times Book Review

"Coupland has at his disposal a dazzling array of tools with which to shape the emotions of his readers: the whimsy of   a latter-day Jack Kerouac, the irony of a young Kurt Vonnegut, the poignancy of early John Irving."  -- Bookpage quote; The self-wrought oracle of our age." -- John Fraser, Saturday Night


Review
"Douglas Coupland continues to register the buzz of his generation    with a fidelity that should shame most professional Zeitgeist chasers."   -- Jay McInerney, New York Times Book Review

"Coupland has at his disposal a dazzling array of tools with which to shape the emotions of his readers: the whimsy of   a latter-day Jack Kerouac, the irony of a young Kurt Vonnegut, the poignancy of early John Irving."  -- Bookpage quote; The self-wrought oracle of our age." -- John Fraser, Saturday Night

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the bestselling author of Generation X and Microserfs comes the absurd and tender story of a hard-living movie producer and a former child beauty pageant contender who only find each other by losing themselves.

SYNOPSIS

From the bestselling author of Generation X and Microserfs, comes the absurd and tender story of a hard-living movie producer and a former child beauty pageant contender who only find each other by losing themselves.

Waking up in an L.A.

FROM THE CRITICS

James Poniewozik - Time

Miss Wyoming is a brilliant American romantic novel.

Mike Snider - USA Today

Miss Wyoming at heart, is a novel about identity. Overall, Coupland's latest is a pagean of his skills that's deserving of a wider audience.

Ellen Kanner - Miami Herald

Though couched as a classic boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl story, Miss Wyoming is really about seeking meaning and identity in a society courting the vacuous. Coupland made this the subtext of his previous novel, Girlfriend in a Coma, but handles it more confidently and playfully here. He lades on the hip cultural references, of course, but beneath the brand names, there's a warning: Generation X is getting older but not necessarily smarter.

AudioFile - AudioFile Review

Much like the Hollywood culture Coupland writes about, this latest work features leaps, flashbacks and complicated dance steps. This novel, which follows the bumpy lives of Susan and John, two movie-industry refugees, is the perfect material for the narration team of Sharon Williams and Aaron Frye. The readers capture the lonesome, sarcastic and hopeful tones of their respective characters, deftly trading off as Susan and John trace the story of their relationship. Williams and Frye take an intricately woven plot and give it life with their performances. Characters have distinct personalities, and Coupland's story is delivered with style and humor, while the theme of love remains intact. L.B.F. ￯﾿ﾽ AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

Read by Sharon Williams, Aaron Frye

Paul Quinn - The Literary Supplement