Eleanor Rigby - Douglas Coupland
It's 2004 and Liz Dunn, in her own words "overweight and lonely woman in her 40's" is writing a journal, in here she relates her childhood years, from finding a severed body of a transvestite in a railway track to sneaking on other people's home, not to steal but just "to sit and stare at the family pics" and a high school trip to Rome.
To the era of the last Haley's Bop comet in 1997, when Liz, lonely yet quite okay with the setup of living by herself, showing for work, renting videos and her condo living receives an emergency call from the hospital about a patient named Jeremy.
All of a sudden Liz's world is catapulted to a never ending examining of what ifs and a race against time to make up for a regrettable decision she made years back. A catapult that will take her into a trip across the world to find the answer to the question that has puzzled her since that school trip to Rome.
All told with a heartfelt honesty that serves as a prelude to a wonderful journey that will climax with Liz while hunched in an airplane seat just above Reykjavik, Iceland in 2004, finally getting that new perspective in life .
****
It's Douglas Coupeland, master of the profound, venturing into a soul of a character not likely of other novels, but very much about the average human being, it can be any of us, the feelings of loneliness, being invisible, unwanted, regrets, Liz Dunn takes us there, to have us realize every words as true, thinking "yeah i've felt that before".
In "Hey Nostradamus" Coupeland takes us how to deal with a tragedy and lost love, in "All Families Are Psychotic" he shows us the craziness of a family all sewn up by one major thread, which is love for one another.
In "Eleanor Rigby", there are patterns of close family ties, while at the same time showing us the brewing distance that a once close knit family encounters when everybody starts growing old, having a family of their own. In here Liz Dunn a self confessed loner is besieged with a caring brother and sister a worried Mother who still lectures her at the same time Liz wonders if she ever makes her proud.
"Eleanor Rigby" while named after the Beatles song about a lonely woman who waits for love by her window, the similarities ends there, aside from being Liz's email (eleanorrigby@arctic.ca) Liz wasn't looking for anything, life as a loner is a gift yet at the same time a curse, it just so happens that when Jeremy arrives in her life, she was left without a choice but to steer different from the path that she expects to thread for the rest of her life.
How one event brought on from an encounter buried in the past can shake things up and provides someone like Liz a real shot at happiness, is both endearing and riveting.
If there's a writer that writes for the underdog it's Douglas Coupland, if there's anyone who could make me read a novel that is narrated by a 44 year old woman, chubby, un-attractive, self confessed loner with "chick lit" written all over, i guess it's Douglas Coupland, not exactly my kind of book genre. But i like it nonetheless, good enough to stay in my shelf for a long time.
To the era of the last Haley's Bop comet in 1997, when Liz, lonely yet quite okay with the setup of living by herself, showing for work, renting videos and her condo living receives an emergency call from the hospital about a patient named Jeremy.
All of a sudden Liz's world is catapulted to a never ending examining of what ifs and a race against time to make up for a regrettable decision she made years back. A catapult that will take her into a trip across the world to find the answer to the question that has puzzled her since that school trip to Rome.
All told with a heartfelt honesty that serves as a prelude to a wonderful journey that will climax with Liz while hunched in an airplane seat just above Reykjavik, Iceland in 2004, finally getting that new perspective in life .
****
It's Douglas Coupeland, master of the profound, venturing into a soul of a character not likely of other novels, but very much about the average human being, it can be any of us, the feelings of loneliness, being invisible, unwanted, regrets, Liz Dunn takes us there, to have us realize every words as true, thinking "yeah i've felt that before".
In "Hey Nostradamus" Coupeland takes us how to deal with a tragedy and lost love, in "All Families Are Psychotic" he shows us the craziness of a family all sewn up by one major thread, which is love for one another.
In "Eleanor Rigby", there are patterns of close family ties, while at the same time showing us the brewing distance that a once close knit family encounters when everybody starts growing old, having a family of their own. In here Liz Dunn a self confessed loner is besieged with a caring brother and sister a worried Mother who still lectures her at the same time Liz wonders if she ever makes her proud.
"Eleanor Rigby" while named after the Beatles song about a lonely woman who waits for love by her window, the similarities ends there, aside from being Liz's email (eleanorrigby@arctic.ca) Liz wasn't looking for anything, life as a loner is a gift yet at the same time a curse, it just so happens that when Jeremy arrives in her life, she was left without a choice but to steer different from the path that she expects to thread for the rest of her life.
How one event brought on from an encounter buried in the past can shake things up and provides someone like Liz a real shot at happiness, is both endearing and riveting.
If there's a writer that writes for the underdog it's Douglas Coupland, if there's anyone who could make me read a novel that is narrated by a 44 year old woman, chubby, un-attractive, self confessed loner with "chick lit" written all over, i guess it's Douglas Coupland, not exactly my kind of book genre. But i like it nonetheless, good enough to stay in my shelf for a long time.
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