I recently read the Coupland book and I found it very hard to get through because the characters were so universally unlikable. I kept wanting to reach through

I recently read the Coupland book and I found it very hard to get through because the characters were so universally unlikable. I kept wanting to reach through the page and punch them in their smug, useless, self-absorbed, ignorant faces. Eventually I decided that was the point of the book, you weren't supposed to like them. I'm still not sure though. If anyone could enlighten me to what on earth the point of that book was, then I'd be appreciative. I guess it could be simply a portrait of a certain type of person at a certain time in history, but it doesn't seem to say anything about them. Maybe that was the point, Coupland was trying to show that these people were utterly irrelevant and pointless? As I say, enlighten me. Maybe I was just in a particularly philistinic mood when I read it. Thinking about it, my dislike for it may stem from the fact that myself and my friends are in an extremely comparable situation to the characters economically and with respect to our relationship to society (except my friends cant even get mcjobs), yet we take almost the opposite attitude to life. I recognise their problems, but am appalled by their solutions. (For reference, I'm in my twenties.)