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The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/all/20060325184151/http://www.whatbooks.com/2005/elanor_rigby.php
Eleanor Rigby : A Novel
by Authors:
Douglas Coupland
Hardcover Description:
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
Average Customer Rating:
Wait... did Chuck Pahlaniuk write this?
So I just finished reading "Eleanor Rigby", Douglas Coupland's latest book. Call me stupid, but I didn't get it. I honestly think this is the most unreadable Coupland book ever. I've been trying to figure out where he went wrong, but I don't really know, having only read four of his books. I've been trying to figure out what it all means, but I've come up empty on that, too.
Here's the story: lonely, fat, thirty-six year old Liz Dunn is the epitome of a spinster, and thee narrator of the book. She's never had any issues with being lonely; for her it's always been a way of life. She's not different enough to warrant any kind of intimacy or affection, she's not smart enough to become a power bitch or pimp herself, in fact, she describes herself as invisible, and has perfected blending in with the office cubicle and her practically monastic apartment.
Then she meets a blast from the past, her long-lost adopted son from her one and only sexual encounter, who, surprise surprise, is terminally ill. And he's having visions. And he can sing backwards. And he's been abused by practically every foster home he's ever been. But, strangely enough, he's sweet, sweet-tempered, a great cook, and a charming, handsome devil.
Anyway, suffice to say that in the end, Liz Dunn's life changes on so many levels, but regardless, at the end, I just found myself going, huh? I haven't been this perplexed by a book since David Mitchell's "Ghostwritten". I know that some of you gush about it as having given loneliness a face and some hope, but I honestly think that such a story could have been told either in a funny, witty, self-deprectating way, or a serious, Hallmark channel kind of way, with maybe a younger Kathy Bates in the lead. Either way, this book was neither funny nor dramatic.
And there's a tone to this book that I can't quite place... the implausibility of some of the events, the overall vaugeness of the characters... Coupland isn't particularly known for symbolism; he's smart and witty, and he has about as much depth as the normal person who has epiphanies looking at sunsets, which is why so many people connected to "Generation X". But with this book, and the visions, and radioactive satellite bits landing on earth... Oh I know! This is the stuff you read from Chuck Pahlaniuk, but that guy's crazy so you sort of expect that anyway from him. But not from Douglas Coupland.
Oh yeah, if you're looking for typical Coupland witticisms, you won't find any here. Which is strange.
I think it has more to do with the fact that this is the first female narrator from him that I've read, and, lemme tell you, he can't write like a woman at all. Liz Dunn comes across as asexual. you could counter with, her loneliness has practically made her asexual, but I disagree; surrounded by spinster aunts, I see what loneliness does to them, and it's definitely not turning them asexual. If not, it makes them more prudish, more conscious of women and bodies and how they imagine men act towards women.
It's just that I can't sympathize with any of the characters, except with Jeremy the long-lost son, but he's practically an adornment to this book. And what about those visions? I really wanted to like this book, so I was thinking it out over lunch, and my interpretation is, no matter how crappy I think it is, is that this is actually a sad book. That there are no happy endings for anyone, that any form of happiness is fleeting, that life sets you up for disappointment, and the most you can do is to get all the happiness that you can, because everything just might start falling apart up one day. Granted, this is a worthy subject, but again, it could have been relayed to us differently.
Maybe he's having a midlife crisis. After all, he is roughly the same age as his main character. And all the pretentions and optimism and carefreeness of the books set in his twenties have all withered away.
When drab collides with extraordinary, who knows?
This book's title is an interesting one, as the story mentions the Beatles' song, of the same name, only once, I believe, when the main character gives out her Internet screen-name as EleanorRigby, but the story could very well be an extension or extrapolation of the life of the song's title-character. Liz Dunn is not ordinary or mundane, but is immersed in the idea that she is less than those things. She repeatedly tells the reader that she is overweight, plain, invisible in a crowd, detached, empty, and chronically, and hopelessly, lonely.
That is, until her world turns upside-down, which is not always a bad thing. Much of the story occurs when Liz is thirty-six, but her life changes when Jeremy, like the comet that so inspired her to try to change, flashes through her life, and changes everything. Who is Jeremy? A quirky, bright, imaginative, charming twenty-year-old, who happens to be the son who Liz gave up for adoption, right after his birth. While Jeremy is only in Liz's life for a short time, he inspires her, invigorates her, and helps her to transcend her own self-fulfilling self-image.
Several more things occur in Liz's life, after Jeremy's departure from Liz's life, that push the limits of credibility, but Douglas Coupland does not always follow the Law of Necessary Credibility (e.g., one of the main characters from his "Hey Nostradamus!" is already dead when that story begins). Some reviewers have voiced that these over-the-edge elements spoiled the story for them. Other readers might feel that way, too, while others will be like me, in that I enjoyed the tale so much that I was perfectly willing to heartily suspend my disbelief and go with the flow of absurdity all the way to its charming, wistful, and, to me, endearing end.
Liz Dunn of "Eleanor Rigby" shows us that chronic loneliness is neither fatal nor incurable. Some people need to hear that. It was a nice reminder for me, even though I already knew it. Here's to all the lonely people: find a way out, as there is always a path to happiness somewhere. It might not be easy to find or to follow, but why does it have to be easy?
Doug, I think your socks need some darning...
While I often recommend other Coupland books to friends, "Eleanor Rigby" just isn't one of them. This book is simply unsalvageable.
There's the token Coupland dialogue (Not sure what this means? Check out any episode of Friends.) combined with the "Me-ism" that is so frequent in his books. (Me-ism: A search by an individual, in the absence of training or traditional religious tenets, to formulate a personally tailored religion by himself. Most frequently a mishmash of reincarnation, personal dialogue with a nebulously defined god figure, naturalism, and karmic eye-for-eye attitudes.) This formula has worked in the past but, sadly, this is not the case with Eleanor Rigby. These words ne vont pas tres bien ensemble, if you know what I mean.
The first half is mildly interesting but the book rapidly devolves into a misguided post-911/post X-Files/post-"Jesus Christ Pose" plot twist. (Come on, Doug, it would have been waaay cool to have the black oil come out of that radioactive meteorite! And then the oil could have turned into wine!). And the ending! By God, the ending is so formulaic and embarrassing that it could have been spewed from the Powerbook of the laziest Hollywood hack. (Hint: if you don't like happy love story endings, don't read this book.)
For true treatise on loneliness, try Life After God instead.
It's sad to see so many people giving this mediocre book 5 stars. Granted, some of Coupland's past work has been transcendent but that's no reason to lap up everything he writes. Comparison: do you believe U2 just dropped a bomb, not necessarily an Atom Bomb? If so, just walk away from Eleanor Rigby.
(Doug: sorry if this review sounds mean. I thought however that you of all people would appreciate all the clever pop culture riffing.)
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Wait... did Chuck Pahlaniuk write this? 
When drab collides with extraordinary, who knows? 
