But there is enough variety in the damage, I think, for every reader to find something with which to empathise. Inside the four main characters, prompted and provoked by two supporting actors, reveal themselves over the course of an afternoon as shocking events take place outside. This simple, Spartan, sit-com-esque environment could easily be the basis of a simple, single-set play. …a defeated concrete satellite of the main hotel that resembled the third-best restaurant in the fourth-largest city in Bulgaria. Structure comes from the five hours over which the story unfolds.Īnd structure comes from the claustrophobic setting of the Camelot Hotel Cocktail Lounge at Toronto Airport. This is a book that is as much about structure as it is about content. Then I found out that the book actually started life as a lecture series. A website with its core themes indexed and accessible via main navigation buttons – the human condition, relationships, religion, time, storytelling, the environment. Well “five hours” is inherently structured, and I couldn’t shake this mental image of the book as a website. My first thought upon finishing it was that it was constructed as a vessel for several themes close to the author’s heart.

So what happens in those five hours, what is to become of us and what is it all about? It is subtitled “What is to become of us?” Player One describes itself as a novel in five hours.

Player One by Douglas Coupland