Product Description

Following the hugely acclaimed bestseller Hey Nostradamus! comes a major new novel from Douglas Coupland: the wonderfully warm, funny, life-affirming story of Liz Dunn, a woman who has spent her whole life alone and lonely -- until now! This is a brilliant work of commercial literary fiction from an author who just gets better and better. 'My name is Liz Dunn. The Liz Dunns of this world take classes in croissant baking, and would rather chew on soccer balls than deny their children muesli. They own one sex toy, plus one cowboy fantasy that accompanies its use! Look at me: I am a traitor to my name: I'm not cheerful; I'm drab. I'm crabby and friendless. And lonely.' Liz Dunn is 42 years old, and lonely. Her house is like 'a spinster's cell block', and she may or may not snore -- there's never been anybody to tell her. Then one day in 1997, with the comet Hale Bopp burning bright in the blue-black sky, Liz receives an urgent phone call asking her to visit a young man in hospital. All at once, the loneliness that has come to define her is ripped away by this funny, smart, handsome young stranger, Jeremy. Her son. Eleanor Rigby is a tale of loneliness and hope that introduces Douglas Coupland's finest character yet. Illuminated by a wonderfully gentle, searching wisdom, it sees Coupland ascend to a new level of peace and grace in his ever-more-extraordinary career.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60967 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'A high spirited moving study of loneliness and all its opposites.' Observer Books of the Year. 'A powerful and moving examination of a life lived negotiating loneliness.' Independent 'Eleanor Rigby is one of Coupland's subtlest indictments yet of Yankee-yuppie culture.' Daily Telegraph 'Bristles with acerbic observations of modern life.' Sunday Telegraph 'Funny, unexpected and fragile, here [Coupland is] the chronicler of our potentials rather than our losses.' Guardian Praise for Douglas Coupland's fiction: 'Douglas Coupland has surely reserved his place at the top table of North American fiction.' Independent on Sunday 'Nothing less than sublime' Time Out 'Far too wise to offer answers, but affirms that seeking them is a necessary part of our humanity.' Independent 'Coupland's last four novels are so good and so distinctive that they seem to me to mark a genuine seismic shift in the literary landscape.' Nicholas Blincoe, New Statesman 'Coupland has passion and pace, intelligence and wit. If you find anything about the way we live now disturbing and wrong, he is your man.' Daily Telegraph 'Coupland at his best can make a single phrase say more than many another writer's whole novel.' LRB

Independent
‘A powerful and moving examination of a life lived negotiating loneliness.’

Guardian
‘Funny, unexpected and fragile, here [Coupland is] the chronicler of our potentials rather than our losses.'

Customer Reviews

Eleanor Rigby
Most of this book is shatteringly good. It portrays the loneliness of a single woman so well it was painful to read - the reality, and the bitter understanding of it, is amazingly constructed.

My only problem was with the ending - the unavoidable tragedy is so climactic, and so upsetting, that it would be hard for anything to follow, and I think that what does follow is underwhelming.

Having come to Coupland through Generation X, I couldn't believe how different this book was. It's astonishing and funny and bitter, and a testament to Cooupland's skill, because his main character is so very real.

"I'm that one Scrabble tile that has no letter on it."
Like Eleanor Rigby, Liz Dunn, an overweight, thirty-six-year-old woman, is lonely, living in an apartment which is not a home. While she is recuperating from oral surgery, Liz receives a surprising phone call from the police, summoning her to the hospital. A twenty-year-old man named Jeremy Buck has been picked up wearing mesh stockings and black lingerie and suffering from a drug overdose, and Liz's name is on his Medic Alert bracelet. When she meets him for the first time, he greets her as "Mom."

The novel shifts back and forth between 1997, when Liz first meets Jeremy Buck, and her earlier childhood and teen years, and then fast-forwards to 2004. It gives nothing away to say that Jeremy was obviously conceived on Liz's high school trip when she was sixteen, but she has no recollection of Jeremy's father and no awareness, for many months, that she could even be pregnant. After giving birth during a bout of "indigestion," Liz gives the baby up for adoption, until he finds her twenty years later.

Through this framework, "Generation X" author Douglas Coupland examines the nature of family life and the search for meaning. We know from the outset that Jeremy has multiple sclerosis, but he does not look to religion to provide solace or answers. Instead, he has visions, usually about farm families awaiting the end of the world, visions which bear striking resemblances to some of the issues Liz faces. As Jeremy's MS progresses, his desire to find meaning grows. "Death without the possibility of changing the world was the same as a life that never was," he believes, and he intends to live it as well as he can--with Liz.

Witty and often mordantly funny, the novel develops an edge of satire at the same time that it strives to be emotionally stirring. When Liz goes to Europe to help with a police investigation, seven years later, a comedy of errors ensues, taking the novel further into the realm of absurdity and farce. Although the novel often discusses issues of death and other Gen X concerns, the author uses a consistently light touch, keeping the tone upbeat and avoiding the details of Jeremy's final decline. The novel is not complex, nor is it subtle, with the parallels between Jeremy's visions and Liz's life fully explained by the author. Sparkling dialogue and a conclusion which carries the themes to their absurd conclusions, keep the reader going, and the novel ultimately answers the big questions in the song for which it is named--"Where to we all come from?...Where do we all belong?" Mary Whipple

Good but not wonderful
I think everyone likes Girlfriend in a Coma because a lot of us were teenagers, or near enough, when we read it. It is a great book, but it becomes a bit of a manifesto in the closing pages, where Coupland decides to spell out his ideas and ends up being a bit heavy handed with the ideology. Since then he has tended to write more ambiguous, subtle, intelligent books. I think Hey Nostrodamus is his best.

He carries on in this fashion here. Although Liz Dunn and her son are both good characters, there is not much new to experience. Coupland has never needed a plot to create a beautiful novel and his wilder attempts at making an interesting story tend to come off a bit contrived in this one. The ending should be uplifting but it feels like it was thrown in, as if even Coupland doesn't believe it. You get the feeling that he is too lonely to write a happy ending convincingly.

The great strength of this book is in the voice Coupland has created for Liz Dunn. She is a charming character who becomes your friend as you read. Her son, Jeremy is equally engaging. When he isn't simply a vehical for Coupland's familiar Jenny Holzer rip offs, he's by turns funny and moving.

I enjoyed the book a lot. It's a lot better than a lot of books which will sell more copies. But in the end, I finished it and didn't feel much changed. When Coupland is truely on form his books have a bigger impact and more ideas.