Douglas Coupland - Eleanor Rigby
2004
Eleanor Rigby is told as a memoir, written by Liz Dunn. She looks back at the point in her life when her son Jeremy came into her life. She was 36 and he was 20, and suffering from a very progressive form of Multiple Sclerosis. It also recounts the events that lead up to Jeremy’s birth and adoption. The book then jumps to the present, where Liz meets with Jeremy’s father for the first time since he was conceived. Like most of Douglas Coupland’s books, this book isn’t so much about plot as it is about capturing moments and moods, exploring concept. Though there are lots of plot points, this book is really about one woman’s loneliness, and about how her son’s life and death lifted that veil of loneliness, if only for a short period of time.
I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t one of my favourite Coupland books (those being Girlfriend In A Coma, All Families Are Psychotic, and Hey Nostradamus!), but I really felt like Liz was a real person, an every woman who you could pass on the street without noticing. I didn’t really connect with her personally, but I certainly empathized with her, and I can’t deny that I wanted to see her have a better life than she did. It was a nice break from sci-fi, though. Also, I have now read all of Douglas Coupland’s novels (except God Hates Japan, which was only published in Japan, in Japanese).
