"The 1990s were great because suddenly lonely people had a place where they could all be lonely together while pretending to be fine on the outside. Well, that's what I do in coffee shops. My head may be cyclonic with desperation on the inside, but I've worked damn hard to ensure that I don't look the way I feel. I try to look as if I have a meaningful slot in society." pg. 68

"It has been said by someone far wiser than myself, that nobody is boring who is willing to tell the truth about himself. To narrow this down further, someone equally wise said that the things that make us ashamed are also the things that make us interesting." pg. 141

The above quotes appear in Douglas Coupland's latest uneven novel Eleanor Rigby. I've written about this previously, but the trend seems to be continuing, at least as far as Coupland's writing is concerned, of writers who can't seem to sustain a narrative that doesn't veer off into the outlandish and unbelievable. The book, which is a rather slim 249 pages, serves up an interesting premise at the start and an intriguing narrator, who voices the above observations. The main character, Liz Dunn, is set up as being someone whose life is filled to the brim with an overbearing sense of loneliness and isolation, and it's this quality that I truly related to and made the above quotes, especially the first one, seem very poignant. What happens, though, is that in this very short novel, Coupland hammers this point home beyond necessity. Very few pages go by without some mention of feeling neglected in some form or another. This does little to create a sense of sympathy towards the character. In fact, it works in the reverse affect; this bemoaning of the fact is nothing more than an antithesis to any narcissistic impulse that fuels the egos of the self-absorbed. So, in the end, one could care less about her being a lonely woman whose job is the only ritual in her life that seems to break up the monotonous aspects of consigned isolation.

To add further to the absurdity, the character, surprisingly or perhaps not so much so, has a lot of money. Being a lonely woman who has no need to spend money on herself or others affords her the opportunity to amass a small fortune. Why this grates on my nerves is that Coupland sets up a very believable character but has to add some aspect to her character that takes her out of the realm of believability into the arena of the stock novel character. It's troublesome to go through a novel and bond with a character so much because you can say, "Hey, I've felt exactly like that," only to have it thrown into the wind by some outlandish plot twists that distance you from the character more and more. I frequent coffeeshops, and I assume that this is an accurate portrayal of not only myself but of others who are there as well. Reading this, I was intrigued by the idea of a character who isn't good looking, is overweight, and a loner, but the fact that she's amassed a large fortune and has an absurdly romantic climax put the finishing touches to her life story all but effectively eliminates any sense of camaraderie. I wish writers would just dispense with the feel-good flourishes and just write about life as it is and how it truly flows.