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"The Gum Thief" by Douglas Coupland
2006

Roger is a middle-aged and divorced 'aisles associate' at a Staples outlet. His co-worker Bethany is facing fifty more years of shelving Post-it notes. Then Bethany discovers Roger's notebook and finds that he's writing diary entries pretending to be her - and weirdly, he's getting it right. Bethany and Roger strike up a secret correspondence, and as it unfolds so too do the characters of Roger's work-in-progress "Glove Pond", a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong.

This is Coupland at his finest again. It is told through letters and e-mails and notes the characters write to each other and the chapters of Roger's novel. And one of the characters in that novel is writing a story too, leading to a story within a story within a story, with the innermost story reflecting almost identically the outermost one.

It's a clever book and full with incredible insights that are typical of Coupland. You feel for all the characters and just want them to be happy. You probably know them - those guys stuck in McJobs with no prospects and no future.

An amazing read, again.