From the Publisher
"Coupland…writes a sparkling sentence and a mean epigram."—
Entertainment Weekly
"Coupland has crafted a formidable pop style that hooks up dead-on cultural anthropology with surprising reserves of emotion…What's remarkable is how easy it is for even the best adjusted among us to see ourselves in Coupland's compassionate (and occasionally madcap) portrait."—Village Voice
"Told with abundant wit and a deceptive simplicity."—BostonGlobe
"Coupland's weirdest and most accomplished work to date…could be one of the first great novels of the new century."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Poignant, funny, intrepidly offbeat…[a] clever, inspired, brilliantly strange tale."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Publishers Weekly
Liz Dunn is fat, lonely and has no friends. That sounds harsh, but Coupland faces unpleasant facts head on in this poignant, funny, intrepidly offbeat new novel. The only exciting incident ever to brighten Liz's life was a class trip to Rome when she was 16, during which she attended a party where she drank so much she can't remember what happened. Nine months after she returned home, she gave birth to a son, an event hidden from her family because of her natural rotundness. Liz gave the child up for adoption and then launched into a life of perpetual loneliness (hence the title's nod to the lonely lady of Beatles fame). All this changes when her now 20-year-old son, Jeremy, shows up. He's a great kid, but his story is tragic-he bounced around foster homes until he could take care of himself, he has multiple sclerosis and his body is rapidly deteriorating. Coupland, whose hip literary homeruns include Generation X and Hey Nostradamus, avoids the pitfalls of weepy melodrama with sarcastic humor, inspired treatment of the weirdness of everyday life and dark mystical interludes (Jeremy has bleak visions about farmers who receive odd messages from God). At the novel's spectacular, and spectacularly unexpected, denouement, Liz finally meets the father of her son. It's a bittersweet reunion and a perfect ending to this clever, inspired, brilliantly strange tale. Agent, Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit. (Jan.) Forecast: This is Coupland's tightest novel in recent years and will likely attract new readers while fully satisfying his loyal base. Six-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In his ninth novel, veteran Canadian writer Coupland (Hey Nostradamus!) treads familiar ground with wayward Generation X characters and feckless family members, but here he is particularly interested in how loneliness affects his protagonist, the chronically solitary Liz Dunn. Liz has reconciled herself to seeking inner peace as her primary goal in life, since companionship on any level will always elude her. This mindset changes when terminally drab Liz discovers that she has a 20-year-old son, Jeremy, who has a debilitating physical affliction but the looks, personality, and charm of a young Tom Cruise. In the first part, Coupland provides a moving narrative as Liz learns for the first time what it's like to care and provide for someone you love. Unfortunately, he ultimately falls back on old standbys (e.g., zany plot twists) and a surfeit of caustically hip turns of phrase that dismantle most everything of substance developed in the book's beginning. This departure from poignancy eventually results in a satisfying transformation for Liz but an unrealistic one for readers. Given the book's unevenness, recommended only where Coupland is popular.-Kevin Greczek, Ewing, NJ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A remembrance of things past that turns inexplicably into a harbinger of the apocalypse-as well as Coupland's (Hey Nostradamus!, 2003, etc.) weirdest and most accomplished work to date. Liz Dunn, unmarried and unattached, works as a cubicle clone at some communications firm in Vancouver and appears to have few passions, obsessions, vocations, or hobbies. One night, however, she's struck by a bolt out of the blue-almost literally-when a fragment of a meteorite lands a few feet away from her in the parking lot of her local supermarket. All at once, her life begins to change: she becomes hopeful, lighthearted, and about as euphoric as a Canadian can be. Shortly thereafter, she even receives a telephone call from the Mounties asking her to stop in at a nearby hospital, where a young man has been admitted who claims to be her son-as, in fact, he is. Jeremy is the fruit of a one-night stand in Rome on a high school trip 20 years before, but Liz put him up for adoption immediately after his birth and never saw him again. Now, he has multiple sclerosis and is suffering from hallucinations brought on by drugs. Liz immediately assumes responsibility for his care, then slowly begins to recall the events of that long-ago summer in Rome. When police contact her and ask her to assist them in a difficult and extremely bizarre investigation, she even gets summoned to Vienna to meet the boy's father, whose name she has forgotten. En route, she inadvertently causes an international incident, shuts down one of the largest airports in the world, and ends up in jail. But she does it all with as little fuss as possible and manages to make her way to a happy end. Extremely funny yet quite moving (and evenplausible): could be one of the first great novels of the new century. Author tour. Agent: Eric Simonoff/Janklow & Nesbit
Marie Claire magazine
"Liz is such a believably, sympathetic narrator that you're gripped all the way."
Entertainment Weekly
"Coupland can still write a sparkling sentence and a mean epigram."
New York Post
"A mystical meditation on loneliness and solitude."
People magazine
"[A] heartwarming novel.Coupland has a canny take on everything, and his one-liners zing."
Village Voice
"Coupland has crafted a formidable pop style that hooks up dead-on cultural anthropology with surprising reserves of emotion."
Boston Globe
This tale.is told with abundant wit and a deceptive simplicity."
Tampa Tribune
"Funny, sometimes even profound, these authors offer an amusing road map to that strange and winding road from bachelorhood to marriage."
The Denver Post
"Men, those freedom-loving buggers, want romance after all."
The Boston Herald
" Eleanor Rigby remains as thoughtful and melancholy as the Beatles song its title evokes."
The New York Times
"Liz's musings on loneliness have a welcome pungency."
The Los Angeles Times
"Marvelous.This book is funny and strange, but it's also moving and bittersweet."
Hartford Courant (CT)
"Ever the risk-taker, [Coupland] enters the blandly settled consciousness of a fat, unloved, 50-ish woman with no friends and no life, and makes us believe in her."
The News-Press
"Coupland's eighth novel.is chock full of the good-natured goofiness we've come to love."
Houston Chronicle
"Coupland's writing is a fast river of fresh perceptions and comic dialogue."
Buffalo News (New York)
"Eleanor Rigby is heartfelt and a lightning-quick read, well worth the time and a must for any Coupland fan or any newcomer."
USA Today
"Strange and inventive."
