“The Liz Dunns of this world tend to get married, and then twenty-three months after their wedding and the birth of their first child they establish sensible lower maintenance hairdos that last them forever. Liz Dunns take classes in croissant baking, and would rather chew on soccer balls than deny their children muesli… I am a traitor to my name.” Liz Dunn is one of the world’s lonely people. She’s in her late thirties and has a boring cubicle job at a communications company, doing work that is only slightly more bearable than the time she spends alone in her depressingly sterile box of a condo. Her whole life, she’s tried to get to the root of her sadness, to figure out what she’s been doing wrong, with little success. But then, one night in 1997, everything changes: while standing in the parking lot of a video store, arms full of sappy movies she’s rented to help her convalesce from oral surgery, she witnesses the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet. For Liz, this streak of light across the sky is a portent of radical change — and for her, radical change means finally accepting her lot: “I realized that my life, while technically adequate, had become all it was ever going to be … No more trying to control everything — it was now time to go with the flow.” In that moment, and for the first time, Liz feels truly free. A day after Liz makes the decision to seek peace in her life rather than control, along comes another comet, in the form of a stranger admitted to the local hospital with her name and number inscribed on his MedicAlert bracelet. For the new Liz, the phone call from the hospital feels like “the fulfillment of a prophecy”; the young man, it turns out, is her son, whom she gave up for adoption when she was sixteen. Jeremy shows the scars of his years as a foster child and his most recent drug reaction, but is otherwise beautiful and charming. And when he moves in with Liz to recuperate, it’s as if both of them had been waiting for this moment all their lives. A lost soul and occasional visionary, Jeremy upends Liz’s quiet existence — shocking her coworkers and family, redecorating her condo, getting her to reevaluate her past and take an active role in her future. But he’s also very ill with multiple sclerosis. Her son’s life-and-death battle induces a spiritual awakening in Liz — then triggers a chain of events that take her to the other side of the world and back, endangering her life just as an unexpected second chance at happiness finally seems within reach. With Eleanor Rigby, Douglas Coupland has given us a powerful and entertaining portrait of a woman who could be any one of us — someone who thinks it is too late to make anything of her life, who feels defeated by the monotony of her days, yet who also holds within her the potential for monumental change and for great love. When Liz asks, “What happens when things stop being cosmic and become something you can hold in your hand in a very real sense?” she’s not just talking about stray meteors anymore. The excitement of not really knowing the answer is what life’s all about. In the end, Liz discovers that life is no longer a matter of keeping an even keel until you die, or settling for peace and quiet, but of embracing faith and hope and change.
“What if God exists but he doesn’t really like people very much?”It’s 2am. I’m willing back an emotional outburst. It manifests itself in the usual way—lump in the throat, shaky hands. Damn. I hate this and then again…. Do you ever feel like the Tin Man? It’s a horrible feeling. ”I feel like that one Scrabble tile that has no letter on it.” ExactlyIt’s been a dozen years (at least) since I’ve read Coupland. I remember being inspired by Generation X and feeling like I was a piece of living history. This was our time---He was writing about me. Oh, to be young and so self-absorbed.You can’t go home again, right? That’s the saying? Yet here I am feeling that Coupland has nailed it. He gives me faith. Time is whimsical and cruel.” Uh huh.Maybe I should talk about the book. Right. Stay on track. In front of me is a piece of notebook paper with page numbers and quotes scribbled all over it. I do this when I read something that elicits gooseflesh. 91, 92, 128, 130, 139, 117, 118, 179, 180, 57, 58, 229, 1. So, I’m not exactly sure how to review this book. I mean, I could do the standard book jacket rant, but that’s not me. I’m one of those irritating reviewers that likes to talk about how the book makes me feel and how it relates to me (see: self absorbed).This book mentions 4 hidden layers of personality, the public self, the private self, the secret self and the dark self. “The fourth is the dark self – the one that drives the car, the one that has the map; the one that is greedy or trusting or filled with hate. It’s so strong it defies speaking.”Lately, I’ve been relating to that 4th self. That frightens me a little.This book is about loneliness and settling and then light and hope and visions and ’A new order, cold white lights that burn and die.” It’s about farmers and fate and family and mystics. It’s seeing beauty in the ordinary and appreciating the surprises. It’s about painting one wall red. I loved this book. I love Coupland for stringing together words, for giving me my faith and still letting me be a skeptic. 2nd sentence: ”Just imagine looking at our world with brand new eyes, everything fresh, covered with dew and charged with beauty—pale skin and yellow daffodils, boiled lobsters and a full moon.”It’s a good day.
What do You think about Eleanor Rigby (2006)?
Coupland is certainly one of the most keen observers of modern life. He poses a question and then sets out to examine it.In Eleanor Rigby, he creates a protagonist who is lonely and isolated. More correctly, she has loneliness and isolation thrust upon her by virtue of been fat and plain and after enduring a difficult childhood. She wallows in it and seemingly embraces it until in a miraculous turn of events ( a passing comet substitutes for the waving of a wand), a young boy - the son she never knew, is injected into her life and turns it upside down. The woman with lots to live for but who instead counts down the days to her death in faced with a beautiful boy with no hope of a long life but has a joie de vivre which belies his dim prospects. By telling her story as a series of flashbacks and in the first person, one knows that there has been some resolution but it is only very late that we learn what it is.The book is filled with thought-provoking observations on life which is one of the reasons for reading Coupland's books in the first place.Those who are frustrated with this book often cite occasionally clumsy and improbable plot twists. These have to be accepted to truly enjoy books like this. Nick Hornsby comes to mind. Fairly tales allow children to experience and work through their deepest fears ( separation anxiety, oedipal complex) without having to live them. The story on the surface is only the sugar coating of something much more complex.People who have read a lot of Coupland's books say this is not his best. Nevertheless, it is very good.
—William
3.5 STARS "Meet Liz Dunn -- a good woman who has become very good at being lonely. Then, after 25 years apart, her amazing 25-year-old son returns into her life. And, at 40, suddenly, she is no longer alone, and must decide what matters more: peace, certainty or love?Once upon a time Liz Dunn was the loneliest girl in the world. One starry night, far from home, she told a stranger she was tired of being lonely. So, he tried to put an end to all that. Twenty-five years later, into her life walks, for the very first time, her son Jeremy. And everything changes. Liz has in the interim learned to live with loneliness, and become rather expert at it, as well as being sparky, competent and sarcastic when necessary. Now, with Jeremy in her life, she has to abandon her certainties as her world expands... This is a novel irradiated by hope and illuminated by trust, that also fizzes with whirls in Vienna, romance in Rome, mayhem in Frankfurt and visions in Vancouver. It is blessed with the commanding presence of an unforgettable heroine in Liz Dunn, with whom Douglas Coupland ascends to a new level of peace and grace in his ever-more-amazing career as an artist of rare capabilities." (From Amazon)A great novel.
—Kris - My Novelesque Life
I'm afraid I've long since passed my peak of patience with Douglas Coupland. I guess this isn't so much a review of Eleanor Rigby, as it is a review of anything I've read by him. I must have read at least 6 or 7 of his books and I think I could equally apply this review to most of them.The first of his I read was Jpod and I still enjoy that. I then read Generation X and I enjoyed that too. But with each passing book of his I've read, I've enjoyed them less and less. I don't know if that's a sign of age (mine, since Generation X and Generation A are around 20 years apart and feel largely the same) or whether it's the books which are the issue.Initially, Coupland's novels seem witty, irreverent and somehow holding a deeper meaning in amongst the pseudo spiritual Armageddon scenarios he's been selling for years. The thing is, I find now that most of the characters are interchangeable. As are the plot lines. I cannot distinguish one story from another now. They're just so similar in so many ways.As a 19 year old I loved that intellectual bent his novels seemed to hold, but now I can't see it any more. I no longer believe that they are as smart as they believe they are. It all feels like posturing. Reading multiple Coupland books erodes any sense of weight you initially applied to his thoughts. I'd still recommend Jpod and Generation X to people who haven't touched anything by him. Especially if you work in software. However, I'd say pick three of his and leave it at that. Read any more and you'll ruin it for yourself.As for Eleanor Rigby, it's just pointless. Normally (I say normally, I mean every time) Coupland novels tend to weave their way to a bit of a non-ending. That's quite charming in most cases, but I just don't follow it here. This story never really has any satisfying moments to it. Some interlinked events happen. Some Coupland characters say some Coupland-ish things. At some arbitrary point, it ends. If you choose to read a book by Coupland, don't choose this one.
—Michael Conland
