BOOK REVIEW: "Miss Wyoming"

Miss Wyoming
By Douglas Coupland
Copyright 1999
Vintage Contemporaries
Adult Fiction

3.5 Bookmarks

What a crazy ride this book was!  Summarizing will be tough, but I'll give it my best shot. 

Susan Colgate, former beauty queen and now paparazzi favorite, disappears from a plane crash in which every other passenger dies.  When she suddenly reappears a year later, it's bedlam. 

John Johnson, famous Hollywood producer is obsessed with Susan.  John, who stages his own little disappearing act, finds that living on nothing isn't to his taste.  When, at last, Susan and John meet in person, it's love (or something sort of like it) at first sight.  But Susan's existence is a crazy one as she deals with her former beauty queen circuit mother, the fact that she's hiding everything about the time she was away, all the while trying to tape together the remnants of her career. 

When John meets a video store clerk with a shrine to Susan (which he, of course, purchases immediately), things start to get a little intense. 

I won't ruin the ending because it's a pretty good one.  I liked this book.  The satirical nature of the story flowed fantastically from the "toddlers in tiaras" set all the way to the Hollywood wife of a rock star segment.  It was a fun read from Coupland, and just as typically quirky as you would expect from him.