Eleanor Rigby

By Douglas Coupland

There’s something about the way that Coupland writes that has me hooked. His characters aren’t just characters but are real people who are deeply aware of their relational, emotional and spiritual depths and longings and draw you into responding to them. Liz Dunn is one of these and Liz Dunn is the main character of this book.

Some authors write in a highly structured way, making sure that you know a character in just the way you need to for the story to work. Coupland doesn’t do this, or, if he does, I don’t see it going on. There’s stuff I know about his characters that doesn’t change the story but does connect me with those involved. Coupland simply introduces his characters and let’s you live with them for a while. You get to know a person by listening as they tell you about situations and events that they’ve experienced – some superficial, some significant, some formative – and it’s the one’s that affected them, that made them feel something that tell you who they are. That’s how I’ve gotten to know Liz Dunn.

The genius of Coupland, as with the way that a relationship moves from casual acquaintance to friend to real commitment, is that ‘getting to know’ suddenly moves on a few stages to sharing in those life situations and events together. Coupland allows time and space for you to know his characters and then asks you to commit to them, to engage in their stories with them. As I’ve read this book, that been how it was between me and Liz Dunn.

Leslie, William (with his frosty, sullen wife and two ‘monster’ kids), Mother and ultimately Jeremy, Rainer and Klaus all matter to me whilst I’m reading because I know and am committed to Liz Dunn.

I think that this book, this story, this account, will only be an experience that you enjoy if you’re prepared to engage in it, to be there with Liz. Might I dare to suggest that if you tend to hold people at arms length it says something about you and Coupland will expose that forcing you either to change or to give up around page 50. If you want drama and action you probably won’t be reading a Coupland novel in the first place.

I have to confess, probably because I’m a bit too young and have never really got into the Beatles, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ doesn’t mean quite so much to me as a title, but I get the gist.

This really does rank up there with the best of Coupland’s novels. Enjoy!