Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82027 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-30
• Released on: 2006-05-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.com
Liz Dunn isn't morbid, she's just a lonely woman with a very pragmatic outlook on life. Overweight, underemployed, and living in a nondescript condo with nothing but chocolate pudding in the fridge, she has pretty much given up on anything interesting ever happening to her. Everything changes when she gets an unexpected phone call from a Vancouver hospital and a stranger takes on a very intimate place in her life. From here the plot of Douglas Coupland's Eleanor Rigby skyrockets into a very bizarre world, rife with reverse sing-alongs and apocalyptic visions of frantic farmers. The style and plot paths are very identifiably Coupland--slightly mystical, off-kilter, and very, very smart. Ultimately a novel about the burden of loneliness, Eleanor Rigby takes its characters through strange and sometimes nearly unimaginable predicaments.

Fans of Douglas Coupland's later novels, particularly Hey Nostradamus! and Miss Wyoming, are bound to like Eleanor Rigby. Like many of his novels, the journey is strange and unexpected but you come out at the other end with a snapshot of a sardonic and bizarre but ever-so-slightly hopeful place. --Victoria Griffith

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
If you were asked to imagine a lonely person, you might picture a character very similar to Liz Dunn, the protagonist of Douglas Coupland's latest novel, Eleanor Rigby. Liz has a boring job, a depressing, featureless condo and no friends. She's overweight, inexperienced with men, pessimistic about the future and spends her days like someone in an airport terminal waiting for a flight to depart, finding ways to make the minutes pass more quickly.

And what would you do with such a sad lump of a character? Naturally you'd want to introduce someone exciting and unpredictable into her life, someone to shake things up with his quirky ways and odd ideas and irrepressible joy at being alive. But Jeremy, Liz's long-lost son, isn't just zany and devil-may-care, he's smart and incredibly handsome and unreasonably charming, yet very patient and kind, and, best of all, he's terminally ill! What better way for Liz, fat and depressed and lonely, to reconnect with her will to live than by unearthing her primal mothering instincts for an utterly perfect child with a death sentence?

Veering so close to the territory of lighthearted yet poignant romantic comedies and quirky, feel-good movies could make any author nervous. No one wants his novel to bear a striking resemblance to the next whimsical vehicle featuring those kinder, gentler parts Jack Nicholson has been playing lately.

Yet in movies like "As Good as It Gets" and "About Schmidt" and "Something's Gotta Give," the Nicholson character has substantial flaws, which we learn through observing him in his natural habitat: He's obsessive-compulsive. He kicks little dogs. He's jealous of his daughter's fiancé. Coupland's lead characters, on the other hand, are quirky and sharp and self-aware, and we learn about their flaws only when they tell us about them directly -- but we still don't believe them.

"I'm drab, crabby and friendless," Liz informs us early on. But aren't drab, crabby, friendless people the last ones to admit that they're any of the above? No matter, since we never witness Liz behaving in an outwardly crabby way, not even when one of her compassionless siblings drops by unannounced.

"I used to be street trash," Jeremy tells Liz upon meeting her for the first time, but nothing about him is remotely trashy. Even when he recounts his awful childhood, which he spent being passed around among foster homes, he manages to sidestep any raw expressions of rage at being given up by his mother. Even when he discusses his struggles with multiple sclerosis, he remains tough and patient and condemns those who believe that the disease should allow them to behave like victims. Even when his girlfriend flies into a rage and throws his boom box out the window, he politely requests that she calm down. In fact, Jeremy spends most of the novel delighting and entertaining everyone he meets, then cooking them a tasty meal. If this sort of behavior is a product of the foster system, we should all be so lucky as to be abandoned by our parents.

As readable and entertaining as Coupland's writing has been since his widely read first novel, Generation X, was published in 1991, there's no conflict here, and nothing moves the story forward because it's not clear what any of the characters really needs. Liz and her son are not only exactly alike, they're utterly in step with each other and agree on the proper course of action at every turn. Coupland offers his usual insights about existential angst and life being what you make it, but somehow the satisfaction of seeing two characters clash, only to recognize that they complement each other, is missing: These two merely match. Without any little rough spots and moments where they bring out the worst in each other, there's really nothing interesting or touching about their mutual affection.

The most dramatic moments -- Jeremy falls and hits his head, signaling his impending decline; Liz is accosted by secret agents at the airport -- are recounted after the fact, from a great distance. Again, imagine a Nicholson character, without the flaws, telling the camera that he eventually became a happier guy, but we miss the scene where he hugs the dog or accepts his daughter's fiancé or falls in love with Diane Keaton.

Even the Eleanor Rigby of the Beatles' song shows us her desires through her actions: She picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been; she keeps her face in a jar by the door. Not only doesn't Liz Dunn offer any insights about where "all the lonely people" come from or belong, she has no real hopes or dreams to speak of, no secret self that she cherishes, no false self that she presents to the world. Ultimately, we don't know any more about her than she knows about herself. We don't make any discoveries or learn anything new or feel a sense of satisfaction over what she's been through. In the end, it's as if we've spent a few pleasant enough hours in the terminal with her, biding our time until our flight departs.

Reviewed by Heather Havrilesky
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Author of 1991's seminal Generation X, Canadian author Coupland has a lot to live up to. Eleanor Rigby's detractors claim that Coupland has lost his touch, and they dismiss his heroine as derivative and unrealistic. Others feel the author is in top form and praise him for making the dull Liz shine. Coupland's dialogue raises another point of debate; one critic derided him for his stilted phrases, while another found the same phrases wonderfully engaging. Eleanor Rigby is unlikely to find as large a following as Generation X did, but it may prove enjoyable for those who can put up with Liz's crankiness.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Phenomenal book...
It is hard to put into words how much I liked this book. The writing is flawless, the plot is fantastic and creative. It is impossible not to sympathize with the main character. Douglas Coupland engages the reader and never lets go, even after you have finished reading. Coupland has become one of my favorite writers. Eleanor Rigby is one of my all time favorite books. I cannot see how anyone would be disappointed after reading this outstanding book. I feel confident in recommending this book to anyone.

Classic Coupland
"All the lonely people..." is the line behind this Beatles titled novel by Douglas Coupland. Liz Dunn is a lonely, overweight, and seemingly non-descript woman to whom rather extraordinary things happen. Her story, told with Coupland's style of post-modern funk, is pretty unbelievable; however, it is one that takes readers on a wild ride across the continent and back again.

Within the novel, we meet Liz's long lost son, her seemingly average family and co-workers, and her European one night stand. The story is rather mundane, but I give it 4 stars for Coupland's succinct and thought provoking ideas on loneliness. This novel is no Microserfs or Hey Nostradamus! but it's an interesting tale of life, loss, erratic behavior, and ultimately, isolation. This is a good novel for an afternoon on the couch, for certain.

So lonely.
There's a reason the name Eleanor Rigby (a reference to the Beatles' ode to loneliness) is mentioned in nearly every Douglas Coupland book. He has written extensively on the subject of loneliness (most piercingly in "Life After God").

Coupland's musings on loneliness were so precise and true and so immediately gave you that sad little ache that comes with a depressing acknowledgement of your own melancholy experience that I always assumed Coupland had gone through his own bout of solitude and it left a never-quite-recovered scar -- at the very least, it shaped him enough to find a way into almost all of his writing.

Here's the odd thing, though: while his insights into the condition were so accurate in a small dose, when he expanded it to an entire novel -- as he does here with "Eleanor Rigby" -- it doesn't quite have the same verisimilitude.

Frankly, I think our main character Liz's loneliness is too exaggerated to be taken seriously. This is a woman in her 30s who is totally friendless and totally sexless (and therefore miserable) -- and she's been this way her ENTIRE LIFE. While I know all, or most, people go through friendless, sexless, miserable times in their lives, I can't conceive of someone as seemingly normal as Liz going her whole life without making a single friend or going out on one date. I could believe this of someone who is psychotic and totally outside the mainstream of society. But a relatively normal woman who works and has family? She never made an acquaintance at work? She never struck up a conversation in a bookstore? A family member never had a single friend who had similar interests? It's not like Liz suffers from some sort of crushing shyness -- she's fairly smart and can deal with people.

There's simply no way I buy this woman going her entire life without so much as a friend or a date -- it either would have happened or her misery would have driven her to suicide.

Coupland's overall portrait of Liz is flawed, but he does get in a few good insights into what it's like when you're totally alone. Liz's practice of planning activities for every day gave me a laugh (keep yourself busy so you can't stop and remember how alone you are). Liz's later worry -- when someone actually enters her life -- that her little routines will be ruined (now nervous for the survival of the rituals she assumed she hated). These little details are sprinkled throughout the book.

The story of "Eleanor Rigby" is about how the "loneliest woman in the world" comes to meet a son she gave up for adoption when she was sixteen. On a drunken, mostly-forgotten night in Rome, Liz got pregnant (the details are hazy until the end of the book). Her son, the handsome Jeremy, who bounced from one family to the next throughout his life, tracks her down and watches her for years, only to crash into her existence after a bad reaction to drugs.

Jeremy is charming and instantly expands Liz's world, but he also has MS, a finicky disease that could rob Jeremy from Liz very soon.

The Jeremy-Liz relationship has all the cliches you would imagine, but Coupland is such a good author he makes this section of the book truly engaging. Though he is typically too articulate (like most Coupland characters), you will like Jeremy. And you will like looking through Liz's enlarging eyes.

Where the novel goes after that isn't a surprise. Where it ends up is, though, and while Coupland is not known for his endings, this is one of the worst. I simply hated where this novel lands and I couldn't believe Coupland would go there. It felt like an absolute cheat -- and a ridiculous one at that.

My main problem with "Eleanor Rigby" is that I don't find Liz, our main character, very believable. Coupland's other examination of loneliness and sorrow, "Life After God," understood loneliness to be a curable disease; here, Liz seems to think of it as something that cannot be changed. At what point does your abject misery force you to change your life? At what point does desire trump insecurity? I don't think Liz, as a human being, makes any sense.

One thing Coupland is not is boring. Even when he's not at his best -- and I would probably call this my least favorite Coupland novel to date -- he still keeps things rolling along, flashing you with brilliance and understanding. Jeremy has visions in this novel (like a character did in "Girlfriend in a Coma") and I loved their spooky, odd feel. I liked the catty, so-true relationship Liz has with a coworker. Even when Coupland is off, he gives you enough to make reading his book worthwhile. That's true here, too.

This time around I wish Coupland had not inflated Liz's plight to make her son's arrival and its grand effect on her seem more explosive.

Loneliness being what it is, just a little -- and even over a short period of time -- is more than enough to make us sympathize.