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Would you want to be a Beatles song?
Jan. 15th, 2006 12:16 pmI intended to do lots of domestic stuff yesterday. I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and thought I'd read a little waiting for it to finish, the get on with the other jobs. The problem is that the other jobs never got done. Apart from a break to get the washing out of the machine, I read Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland in one go.
The book is about loneliness , at least to begin with. The title rather gives it away. It is a story of a lonely woman who has her life turned around when her son, put up for adoption at birth, turn up and brightens her life until he dies of MS. It all sounds very "movie of the week". However that isn't Coupland. It is a story told in a fragmented time stream with lots of digressions, social comment and epigrams just waiting to be quoted. This may sound chaotic, yet it is written in a clear lucid manner. Further evidence relating to my rant the other day that clear writing is not mutually exclusive with inventive and clever.
I liked this book much better than Girlfriend in a Coma or Miss Wyoming. I got the impression that Coupland rather lost his way after his early generation defining work. He was searching for other major themes to define and didn't quite hit the mark. With Eleanor Rigby, he has lowerd his sights a bit to tell a personal story and has managed to tell a smart funny story in the process.
The book is about loneliness , at least to begin with. The title rather gives it away. It is a story of a lonely woman who has her life turned around when her son, put up for adoption at birth, turn up and brightens her life until he dies of MS. It all sounds very "movie of the week". However that isn't Coupland. It is a story told in a fragmented time stream with lots of digressions, social comment and epigrams just waiting to be quoted. This may sound chaotic, yet it is written in a clear lucid manner. Further evidence relating to my rant the other day that clear writing is not mutually exclusive with inventive and clever.
I liked this book much better than Girlfriend in a Coma or Miss Wyoming. I got the impression that Coupland rather lost his way after his early generation defining work. He was searching for other major themes to define and didn't quite hit the mark. With Eleanor Rigby, he has lowerd his sights a bit to tell a personal story and has managed to tell a smart funny story in the process.