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Microserfs, Microserfs, where to begin?  Generation X author Doug Coupland's fourth book, it is also his most linear to date.  This tale begins in Seattle, in a group house, where five or six Microsoft programmers live, a house with a perpetually revolving door.  The first half of the book describes what I imagine to be fairly accurately what it is like to work both as a computer programmer and at Microsoft.  The description of how "Bill" floats above all the characters as some sort of superhuman invention of the subconscious (he got an email from Bill today!!! or I hear Bill watches the campus out his window to see who takes the shortest path from building to building even if it means traipsing through thick woods.) seems apt.

The occasional page devoted to meaningless pop culture references from the lives of the characters and anyone in their demographic are interesting since some really hit home for this reviewer...stirring up memories of a time gone past while reminding us that we are a product of our surroundings, whether they be little league baseball games or Family Ties.

The second half of the book takes place in Silicon Valley, California with mostly the same set of characters who have left the juggernaut that is Microsoft to open their own software company.  This seems more like a traditional novel than any other Coupland offering yet, although the book doesn't seem to suffer from this conformity at all.  An engaging story, if mostly for the characters themselves who I came to identify with on different levels, I recommend this book for anyone in the 20-35 age group who knows a little about computers and can catch the quirky references (I'm only eating flat food from now on, what can fit under a door, so I can code without having to take food breaks.) both to computers and to the generation that we grew up in.

Thanks are in order for Kim Khan who originally turned me on to the Generation X idea and Doug Coupland's work.