is the last character to be stung. He is from Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. His family was washed away in the 2004 tsunami. He is working at a call center for Abercrombie & Fitch. He had created a prank commerce site which sold "silence" MP3s, which were bogus sound files of the putative silence in celebrity rooms . The New York Times was interviewing him at the moment of his sting, from the other side of the planet. Style The novel "mirrors the style" of Coupland's breakthrough first novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture The story is told through non-numbered chapters, just as the first was. The book is told with a shifting narrative perspective. Each chapter title announces whose perspective the rest of the chapter will be in. The book rotates in the order of Harj, Zack, Samantha, Julien, and Diana for most of the work. Some changes happen due to the plot. The novel is also, like Generation X, a framed narrative. However, as this novel mirrors the style, the framed narrative style is also reflected. The first novel has stories in a frame, where the stories are the important part of the tale. In this novel, the stories help to bring out the characters. Throughout the novel, the importance of stories in a person's life is discussed, and in this novel, the stories are important only so much as they bring out and expand on the character's stories. Title The title is also a reference to Coupland's first novel, and it comes from a quote by Kurt Vonnegut. It is listed in an epigraph: References 2009 Canadian novels Novels by Douglas Coupland Postmodern novels Novels set in Iowa Novels set in New Zealand Novels set in Paris Novels set in Northern Ontario Novels set in Sri Lanka Random House books