Seven Oaks Magazine.

I must admit, off the top, that I have always been a huge fan of Douglas Coupland’s writing, excluding of course the cheesy Souvenirs of Canada photo journals, which I try to block out of my memory. I am always willing, though, to give up a night of sleep for a new Coupland novel and his latest, Eleanor Rigby, was no exception.

For those of us too young to even be part Coupland’s generation X, let alone the baby boomers, the title of his new novel, which references a Beatles hit song, may be somewhat obscure. I am sure there are more people my age who are more acquainted with the “Fab 5” of TV’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fame than those that are intimately acquainted with the original “Fab 4”. The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” is a song about “all the lonely people,” and it makes a perfect backdrop to Coupland’s examination of loneliness. Coupland, however, keeps it subtle, with the only reference to the famous song being the protagonist’s email address, eleanorrigby@artica.ca.

The novel is read as flashbacks of Liz Dunn’s life, riddled as it is with what she describes as “blizzards” of loneliness. Dunn is a single Vancouverite who has reserved herself to the state of being the family’s “spinster.” As a woman who is approaching middle age, carrying a few extra pounds, and sleeping alone on her twin bed every night, she is consumed with her own isolation and solitude, and her feelings are conveyed with trademark Coupland humour.

I particularly enjoyed Dunn’s belief that she exists as a warning to younger women of what they will become if they don’t play their cards right. Dunn becomes completely absorbed into her own loneliness, represented by her badly decorated condo and empty refrigerator. She understands, unlike most people in this crazy consumption-driven world, that loneliness cannot be cured by buying more stuff. In fact, Liz wants to consume as little as possible for fear that other people will think she is wasting the planet’s valuable resources, resources that should be going to more worthy people, i.e. married people. The tender and subtle way that Coupland illustrates the ordinariness of Dunn’s fears is something that is not always present in his works, where I have often be left amazed by the quirkiness of his characters. But with Dunn most can relate to her loneliness, even if we all don’t experience it in blizzard force.

The most endearing quality of Coupland’s work is that once you begin to feel comfortable with a character or a situation, something always drastically changes, something you never even thought possible happens. For Dunn, the twist comes in escaping from her loneliness through being a mother. As a feminist, I am often very opposed to a discourse of sad women being fulfilled by a child, except when the child is a long lost 20 year old son who she meets for the first time after his drug overdose, dressed like the transvestite for a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Ridge. Her son Jeremy’s philosophical nature, his suffering through numerous foster care families and his battle with MS enables Liz to experience and appreciate her life – forcing her to let go of her morbid statistical countdown to death -- as well as allow the world to see her differently.

Coupland throws in a few more curveballs; there’s even a dirty bomb-wielding terrorist, of sorts. In Eleanor Rigby, the Generation X trendsetter still manages to capture the mood of the times, while providing a thoughtful and touching examination of loneliness in the modern world.