In Douglas Coupland’s ingenious new novel — think Clerks meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf — we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged “aisles associate” at Staples, condemned to restocking reams of 20-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life; and Roger’s co-worker Bethany, in her early twenties and at the end of her Goth phase, who is looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in aisle 6.

One day, Bethany discovers Roger’s notebook in the staff room. When she opens it up, she realizes that this old guy she’s never considered as quite human is writing mock diary entries pretending to be her: and, spookily, he is getting her right.

These two retail workers strike up an extraordinary epistolary relationship. Watch as their lives unfold alongside Roger’s work-in-progress, the oddly titled Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly wrong. Through a complex layering of narratives, The Gum Thief reveals the comedy, loneliness, and strange comforts of contemporary life.