A weird and funny feel-good story of an unlikely adventure by an unlikely middle-aged adventurer who discovers love and connection in the most unfathomable places.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review in one word: Revitalising
*Contains no spoilers.
This is an unusual and amusing tale, although it begins in a rather depressing way. Eleanor Rigby is the story of Liz Dunne, a woman who by her own confession is unremarkable in every way, chubby, plain and lonely. She is aged between 38-42, works in a job she hates and lives a solitary existence in a depressing, drab and colourless one bedroom apartment in Vancouver.
Yet all of this suddenly changes when a blast from the past occurs. Jeremy, her long-lost son whom she gave up for adoption when she was a young teenager comes careening back into her life and with him he brings a world of colour, randomness and quirky, eccentric ideas into her world.
Without delving further into the plot and giving away too much, this is an unpredictable, warm, funny and human book. The themes of loneliness, connection, love, lust, self-discovery and the need for adventure are all deeply relatable.
This is darkly funny and emotionally charged book, but without being too corny or over-the-top. There’s a lot of mention of technology that gives away the age of the novel (it was written in 2004 after all) but other than this, it’s a timeless story and the characters are beautifully and vividly rendered. Everyone has a Jeremy or a Liz in their lives. Either that or you possibly have been lonely and desperate for change in your life at one stage or another.
I casually started reading this and was a bit curious. I’d never heard of Douglas Coupland before (turns out he is a well-known author). Several hours later and I was halfway through the book and deeply committed to the larger-than-life characters and the story. I heartily recommend this book for some pleasurable weekend or holiday escapism.
Content Catnip 