Eleanor Rigby

“The Liz Dunns of this world tend to get married, and then twenty-three months after their wedding and the birth of their first child they establish sensible lower maintenance hairdos that last them forever. Liz Dunns take classes in croissant baking, and would rather chew on soccer balls than deny their children muesli… I am a traitor to my name.”

Liz Dunn is one of the worlds lonely people. Shes in her late thirties and has a boring cubicle job at a communications company, doing work that is only slightly more bearable than the time she spends alone in her depressingly sterile box of a condo. Her whole life, shes tried to get to the root of her sadness, to figure out what shes been doing wrong, with little success. But then, one night in 1997, everything changes: while standing in the parking lot of a video store, arms full of sappy movies shes rented to help her convalesce from oral surgery, she witnesses the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet. For Liz, this streak of light across the sky is a portent of radical change — and for her, radical change means finally accepting her lot: “I realized that my life, while technically adequate, had become all it was ever going to be … No more trying to control everything — it was now time to go with the flow.” In that moment, and for the first time, Liz feels truly free.

A day after Liz makes the decision to seek peace in her life rather than control, along comes another comet, in the form of a stranger admitted to the local hospital with her name and number inscribed on his MedicAlert bracelet. For the new Liz, the phone call from the hospital feels like “the fulfillment of a prophecy”; the young man, it turns out, is her son, whom she gave up for adoption when she was sixteen. Jeremy shows the scars of his years as a foster child and his most recent drug reaction, but is otherwise beautiful and charming. And when he moves in with Liz to recuperate, its as if both of them had been waiting for this moment all their lives.

A lost soul and occasional visionary, Jeremy upends Lizs quiet existence — shocking her coworkers and family, redecorating her condo, getting her to reevaluate her past and take an active role in her future. But hes also very ill with multiple sclerosis. Her sons life-and-death battle induces a spiritual awakening in Liz — then triggers a chain of events that take her to the other side of the world and back, endangering her life just as an unexpected second chance at happiness finally seems within reach.

With Eleanor Rigby, Douglas Coupland has given us a powerful and entertaining portrait of a woman who could be any one of us — someone who thinks it is too late to make anything of her life, who feels defeated by the monotony of her days, yet who also holds within her the potential for monumental change and for great love. When Liz asks, “What happens when things stop being cosmic and become something you can hold in your hand in a very real sense?” shes not just talking about stray meteors anymore. The excitement of not really knowing the answer is what lifes all about. In the end, Liz discovers that life is no longer a matter of keeping an even keel until you die, or settling for peace and quiet, but of embracing faith and hope and change.

A riveting, witty, and profound story of loneliness and connection from internationally bestselling author Douglas Coupland.

The 1997 night that Hale-Bopp streaks across the skies over Vancouver, Liz Dunn has nothing in her life but impending oral surgery and an armful of schmaltzy video rentals to get her through her solitary convalescence in her sterile condo. She's overweight, crabby, and plain, but behind her eyes lurk whole universes that she's never had the opportunity to express. Just as Liz makes a quiet decision to seek peace in her life rather than certainty, along comes another comet, in the form of a young man admitted to the local hospital with her name and number inscribed on his Medic Alert bracelet: In case of emergency, contact Liz Dunn.

A charming lost soul and a strange visionary, Jeremy upends Liz's quiet existence, triggering a chain of events that take her to the other side of the world and back, endangering her life just as a real chance at happiness finally seems within reach. By turns funny and heartbreaking, Eleanor Rigby is a fast-paced read and a haunting exploration of the ways in which loneliness affects us all.

Douglas Coupland is known worldwide as a writer with the ability to capture our techno-pop-culture existence to the page, as well as a deep understanding of the connections between people, and between all of us and our world. His work focuses on those moments in life where our material and spiritual realities conjoin, though its taken years — and a distinct rebalancing by Coupland — for this aspect of his writing to come to the forefront of his reviewers minds. But then again, who can blame them for strong preconceptions when Couplands first book, Generation X (1991), skipped the obscurity that is expected of first-time novelists everywhere and grabbed a central role in our cultures vocabulary? Since then he has published more than fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novels Microserfs (1995), Miss Wyoming (1999), All Families Are Psychotic (2001) and Hey Nostradamus! (2003). His work has been translated into twenty-two languages and published in thirty countries.

Upon the original publication of Eleanor Rigby in November 2004, Douglas Coupland was often asked why he chose to write about loneliness, which is a major theme in the book. Coupland said his interest sprang partly from personal experience — he spent some time as a young adult trying to get to the root of his unhappiness, only to realize that he was lonely. But what really intrigued Coupland about the topic was our tendency to ignore what he considers to be one of the most common of life-stunting experiences. As he said in one interview, “I find lonely people arent allowed to exist, period. When youre lonely, thats all you can think about. Then the moment youre not lonely, you run away and avoid lonely people altogether because you dont want to be reminded of that part of your life. So we dont talk about it. And when it happens, most people dont know what it is. They think it must be clinical depression, or an allergy. I think because it is lumped in with depression and other medical conditions, people want to say, ‘Oh, just take your Paxil and come back when youre feeling better. But its not like that.”

Coupland has also described Liz, the lonely narrator of Eleanor Rigby, as one of his most realistic characters yet. Not only does she exhibit the day-to-day preoccupations and sadness of our societys less brilliant lights (i.e., most of us), but she also holds within her the seeds of her own spiritual transformation — a potential Coupland sees as inherent in all of us. Her character grew out of his thinking about another woman in his previous novel: “In my experience, the book youre working on, the seed of it was sown in the previous book, which was Hey Nostradamus! and one of the characters was Heather. I really liked doing her character and thought she could be a bit more than she was, and thats how Liz came about.”

Coupland has become as well known for his nonfiction and his artwork as he is for his fiction. After the success of his book City of Glass (2000), in which he used photographs and essays to illuminate Vancouver, Coupland broadened his lens and used the same approach for Souvenir of Canada (2002) and Souvenir of Canada 2 (2004), weaving together text and images of cultural objects to celebrate what it is to be Canadian. “I think its possible for objects to convey one persons experience in a way that other people can tap into it,” he explained in an interview. “There is a way for objects to be the [touchstones] of shared experiences.” One of the photographs included in Souvenir 2 featured a worn and holey sock — the “lucky sock” worn by Terry Fox on his prosthetic leg during his Marathon of Hope. That books section on Terry Fox, combined with Couplands recognition of the amount of meaning that can be held by objects, became the starting point for Couplands most recent nonfiction book, Terry, which features photographs of Fox family memorabilia alongside moving text about Terrys life. For Coupland, this project was one of the most meaningful hes undertaken. He felt honoured to be able to contribute to Terrys legacy by giving all Canadians another way of appreciating this heros accomplishments: “I can only look at this stuff for about twenty minutes at a time before losing it,” he said. “These images never lose their initial impact.”

For Douglas Coupland, writing is simply what he loves to do, so he does it. “Since 1991 weve been through massive cultural, social, technological changes, and the only thing that protects me or you or anyone, the only thing that can protect you in all this is figuring out what it is that you like to do, and then sticking with it. Because once you start to do what people expect you to do, or what your parents think you should do, or whoever in your life thinks you should do, youre sunk.”

Coupland is also a visual artist and award-winning designer. In fact, he originally set out to be a designer and artist, not a writer. He graduated from the sculpture program at Vancouvers Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1984, then attended the Instituto Europeo di Design in Milan, Italy, and the Hokkaido College of Art and Design in Sapporo, Japan. In 1986, he completed a two-year course at the Japan-America Institute of Management Science in Honolulu, then ended up working as a designer in the Tokyo magazine world. Back in Canada in 1987, he showed enough promise as a sculptor to be given a show, “The Floating World,” at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Since then, he has exhibited throughout Canada and the world. His recent shows include “Canada House” at Torontos Design Exchange, featuring art and design objects that play with the notion of Canada, and “Super City,” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, an imaginary cityscape made up of famous buildings such as the CN Tower and the World Trade Center, constructed from building toys such as Lego. Couplands art has recently appeared in Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, Milan and London, England, and he has won two Canadian National Awards for Excellence in Industrial Design.

Coupland was born on a Canadian Armed Forces base in Baden-Söllingen, Germany, in 1961, the third of four boys — which may account for the major presence of siblings in All Families Are Psychotic and his other novels. Or perhaps it gives Coupland his perspective. As he once commented, “People with many siblings are much more open to the truth that the world is an essentially barbaric place and is always on the brink of anarchy. Single children are the ones who want to bring about world peace through hugs.” Coupland has made the Vancouver area his home since the age of four, and can hardly imagine living anywhere else. He currently lives in West Vancouver, surrounded by trees but blessed with big windows, in a bungalow designed by Ron Thom.

Couplands next book is called jPod, and its a sequel, of sorts, to his 1995 novel Microserfs, which followed the lives of six young computer programmers in Silicon Valley. Coupland — who doesnt normally reread any of his work — had to crack open the original book in order to tackle this new novel: “I hadnt read it in eight years, but I thought I had to read it if I was going to carry through the same tone and spirit. It was great! I loved it! I was smarter and my brain worked better then.” jPod will be published in May 2006.

1. Eleanor Rigby opens with Liz thinking about whether a blind person who became seeing as an adult would be “frightened and confused” and ask to be blind again — then waver and decide to keep the gift of sight after all. Her brother compares it to the experience of being a newborn. Discuss the themes of birth and rebirth in this novel, looking not only at Lizs teenage pregnancy and her pregnancy at the end of the novel, but also at the various characters who seem to be reborn in this story.

2. Is Liz too critical of herself, or is she self-aware?

3. When he first arrives at Lizs condo, Jeremy says, “Ive been in three orphanages in my life, and this place is more depressing than all three combined.” Lizs condo gets a lot of attention in the novel. In what ways does Coupland define his characters by their surroundings?

4. Liz jokes about lonely people becoming fodder for self-help gurus, but is there a difference between being alone and being lonely?

5. Compare Liz and Jeremys personalities, and their outlooks on life. What kinds of similarities or differences do you see between mother and son?

6. After Jeremy arrives, Lizs mother admits to thinking about him every day, even praying in the closet for his return to health. What kind of a woman is Lizs mom? Discuss how unspoken truths lie at the heart of her familys interactions.

7. Liz discovers that, like Jeremy, she can sing songs backwards; Klaus and Jeremy both see visions. Why is heredity, or inheritance, so prominent in Lizs story? Discuss the themes of family and family relationships in this novel — for instance, is Lizs family strange or completely normal? How do foster families function? In what ways did Jeremys upbringing form his character?

8. This novel is chock full of references to pill-popping and drinking. For instance, Jeremy doesnt take his MS drugs because they turn him into a zombie. But he does use recreational drugs, even though they speed up the course of his disease, because they help bring on his visions. Klaus, on the other hand, feels relieved that his new medication puts a stop to his visionary attacks. Discuss the various takes on drugs and alcohol in Eleanor Rigby.

9. In one interview about this book, Coupland commented, “Everyone finds loneliness such a bizarre topic to write about, but I think loneliness is the most common and universal emotion.” What do you think? How is this idea expressed in the characters of Eleanor Rigby?

10. What meaning do you see in Jeremys visions, especially the major stream that was left unfinished at his death and completed — or perhaps just continued — by Liz?

11. When Liz stops writing this story, she says goodbye to all of her readers — her friends — with the words “You are the everything, and everything is in you.” What does she mean?

12. How did the title Eleanor Rigby, taken from the Beatles song of the same name, affect your experience of this novel? Are there ways in which the music or message of the song added to (or detracted from) reading this story? Why do you think Coupland chose a cultural touchstone as a title, instead of coming up with something new?

13. What does Jeremy and Lizs reunion and time together do for each of them? How does Jeremys death affect Liz?

14. Seven years after seeing the Hale-Bopp comet, Liz is dumbstruck when a meteorite slams into the sidewalk in front of her. Of course, it turns out not to be a meteorite but a piece of radioactive space junk. How do these moments change her life? Think also about Lizs many comments on other celestial objects: the sun, the moon, the stars.