Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland

This one was more uplifting and beautiful than riveting and cathartic.

Eleanor Rigby is the most recent Coupland book I’ve read, and it’s ten years old. I’m not sure how that happened, seeing as I consider Coupland one of my favourite authors. I went through a real phase in my early 20s, reading Miss Wyoming, Girlfriend in a Coma, All Families are Psychotic, and Hey Nostradamus! Years later, feeling some generational angst, I finally read Generation X.

Where does this one fit in? I found it a little less all around – less sad, less mind-blowing, less revolutionary. It was a pure comfort read for me. It didn’t demand too much of me emotionally or otherwise and it just felt good. I read it quickly, in a happy haze, not stopping to criticize the fact that Liz is someone who’s life has no meaning whatsoever until she is suddenly thrust into motherhood and who gets a fairytale ending that is kind of ridiculous.

I loved the details like the Hale-Bopp comet sighting and Liz’s email address (eleanorrigby@arctic.ca) and her banging on about how kids in the 70s were allowed to do whatever they wanted. I didn’t like the plot points that were just too crazy or too coincidental. I give Coupland the benefit of the doubt because of who he is. If another author tried to pull some of this stuff, it wouldn’t have gone so well.

I’m looking for another Coupland book that will actually demand more of me. I hear jPod is good…

Books read: 7