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Book Review: Eleanor Rigby, by Douglas Coupland
Saturday, 18 November 2006 10:54 amEleanor Rigby, by Douglas Coupland
This is a daring book; there is a fair chance that by the time you finish the first third, you could give up and decide the protagonist is whiny and annoying. In my head, her voice is just like Sarah Vowell's, possibly because I recently finished reading Ms. Vowell's book. Also, Douglas Coupland's characters all seem to speak with a similar voice as Mr. Coupland himself.
But the narrator is intentionally whiny. She's a boring person who proclaims her boringness as a sort of badge of pride, but also as an excuse. And then, the year of the Hale-Bopp comet, 1997, things change: she discovers she has a son, now 20 years old; who sees visions and has Multiple Sclerosis. And from the part where he becomes the focus of the story, Coupland does a delicate dance to keep from falling into maudlin, or filling out any of the stereotypes he might be tempted to. Jeremy makes a fine character: charismatic, witty, charming... but also, prone to veering into strange territory. Jeremy sees visions of the End Days. Eventually, some of his character comes out in his mom; particularly drawn out by one realization, but you see that evolve in the last third of the book, which takes place seven years later. And by the end, she is very much not a boring person.
This is a daring book; there is a fair chance that by the time you finish the first third, you could give up and decide the protagonist is whiny and annoying. In my head, her voice is just like Sarah Vowell's, possibly because I recently finished reading Ms. Vowell's book. Also, Douglas Coupland's characters all seem to speak with a similar voice as Mr. Coupland himself.
But the narrator is intentionally whiny. She's a boring person who proclaims her boringness as a sort of badge of pride, but also as an excuse. And then, the year of the Hale-Bopp comet, 1997, things change: she discovers she has a son, now 20 years old; who sees visions and has Multiple Sclerosis. And from the part where he becomes the focus of the story, Coupland does a delicate dance to keep from falling into maudlin, or filling out any of the stereotypes he might be tempted to. Jeremy makes a fine character: charismatic, witty, charming... but also, prone to veering into strange territory. Jeremy sees visions of the End Days. Eventually, some of his character comes out in his mom; particularly drawn out by one realization, but you see that evolve in the last third of the book, which takes place seven years later. And by the end, she is very much not a boring person.
