Een schrijver met een eigen, originele stem, deze Canadees.
Zoals het gelijknamig lied van de Beatles gaat het over eenzaamheid. Coupland is verrassend droog, laconiek en emotieloos in zijn beschrijving van Lizzie Dunn, deze wanhopig eenzame vrouw, en toch, hierdoor wordt het net prangend. De absurde humor trekt je ook mee in haar verhaal.
Helaas vlieg je er bijwijlen ook uit, door de ongeloofwaardige plotwisselingen en momenten van vage, zware mystiek.

Thought-provoking novel from which I glean Coupland is as multi-faceted an author as the best of them. This particular case of Liz Dunne is a slow-burner, her life is enigmatic and downright strange, as she gleefully ponders over when she found a dead body on the train trains of North Van, and sporadically broke into strangers' houses for kicks. However, the motif of this novel is loneliness, from which Liz is shackled and unfeeling. Went suddenly her adopted son reappears in her life, this ignites a heart-wrenching series of events that brings Liz to a police cell in Frankfurt and beyond. About half way through the book, the timely introduction of a comet sparked the plot into life, and made me question innate views of people and how we choose to live our lives. Great piece.

'Lives in a dream, Waits at the window.. All the lonely people' - The Beatles, Eleanor Ridgby

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Really, I feel this is more of a 2.5, but I'm rounding up because I really enjoyed the first part of the book.

First off, this was a really quick read. Coupland's style is easy to read. There aren't chapters per se, but the book is punctuated in chapter-ettes and the whole thing is divided into 2 sections. I really liked the first section, the second section left me feeling a bit "WTF."

I can see why so many people dislike the narrarator, Liz. She's a fairly unlikeable character but it's her belief in her inherant unlikeableness that makes the fact that she *is* so "blah" less distasteful. The book sets Liz up as a stereotypical spinster -- middle aged, unattractive, unfriended, alone, depressing apartment, zero love life (ever) -- she's completely uninterested in having A Life. Her son (who she had when she was a teen and gave up) comes into her life and breathes color into her life. It's a pretty straightforward story, but enjoyable. I honestly enjoyed the relationship between Liz and Jeremy; it was warm and funny and touching -- everything that Liz believed she was incapable of (or at least believed was out of her reach).

Coupland always throws some weird twists and back stories into his books, so I expected some of that. However, the second half of the book completely jumps the shark. The meteor-turned-radioactive space junk didn't kill the book for me. I was still hanging in there during the whole "why am I in this foreign jail?" scenario. It wasn't even the "meeting the father" scene that takes place halfway around the world that killed it. It's the fact that, after she's spent the entire book telling us how unlikeable she is (outside of her son), she instantly falls into mutual love with the father of her child -- whom she didn't even remember at the beginning. And it's not just that they fall in love, but that he's a super-handsome dentist who just never happened to have a relationship because he was suffering from a debilitating metal disorder until a month before they met. W.T.F.  

The only bit of the second half of the book that I *did* enjoy reading was the retelling of Jeremy's funeral; that scene alone buouyed the book back up to 3 stars territory. Otherwise, I'd recommend just reading the first part of the book and leaving off there.

Really enjoyed this, classic Coupland and delighted to read this morning that he's got a new book out next month.

I thought this might be quite a depressing book and was slightly worried about picking it up, but the tone of writing stops it becoming so. Liz is actually quite funny and although obsessed with dying and death, seems to function through her life actually quite well. The arrival of Jeremy doesn't exactly turn her life upside down as in some weird way, it almost magnifies her loneliness and obsessions. But it does make her reassess some of her hide-bound mentalities. I loved the whole twist with the meteorite - that episode was written with a humorous smirk that I adored. Overall, a good read and one that I was surprised to enjoy.

Often times when I go to the library sales, I often find something I would never read on my own and get a pleasent surprise. This is one of those times. There is no Eleanor Rigby in the book, the title is obviously there to remind you that you are reading about lonely people and where do they come from. Well this is nature over nurture as we see father, mother, and son all suffer from self imposed loneliness. While I admire that the book doesn't soft peddle this, and Coupland is an author who's work I have enjoyed from Microserfs does try to give us a realistic portrait here, it still gives us an artificial contrived "happy ending" that I did feel takes away from the book getting there. Read the book, ignore the ending. It has worked for fans of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I am not surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Coupland is a legend and this book doesn’t disappoint.

Fun read. Very light and yet daring in several ways. The gradual presentation of change is well handled, yet for a book about loneliness there was less a sense of loneliness than a conquering of the same. This probably made it a better book. I hadn't read any Coupland since Generation X and Shampoo Planet back in the day. My curiosity is piqued, and I want to read more.

I felt this book to be quite cohesive and strong for Coupland (I've read about 6 others), although the book didn't move me quite as much as I expected. No real weak points and maybe a bit anti-climatic, but very enjoyable to read, as his social observation was very sharp throughout. Overall, I thought it was more cohesive, but less ambitious than Girlfriend in a Coma.

"All the lonely people, where do they all come from? ....Where do they all belong?" In the song, Eleanor Rigby and Father MacKenzie are lonely and so caught up in their own sorrows that they don't see the lives around them or reach out to others; they see only their own issues. Is this the way it has to be with loneliness?

This story is warm and told with humor and reality. Liz Dunn is lonely. She admits it and waits for death. She sees no other way through life. She's short, overweight, plain, has no friends.....what does she have to offer the world? These problems engulf her (much as Eleanor Rigby's problems did her).
Enter her son who she gave for adoption; a young man who spent his years in foster care, as lonely as one can get.
The events that follow are funny, touching, sad, uplifting and warm.

Coupland is a wonderful writer, getting to the heart of a matter in touching ways. He has a unique perspective.

I had no idea what to expect with this book. I found it at a used book store and was pleasantly surprised to discover it is based in Vancouver, so I was able to actually picture everything as I live nearby.

It started pretty good, the whole book had a good pace to it and characters that I liked enough to care about and read about. I liked the mystery and the way the story sort of bounced around to different times of Liz's life. I did not entirely like the ending, though. It felt too quick and rushed and a bit over the top. I didn't think Klaus should have been given a free ticket out of jail (literally) as I would consider him still having raped Liz. She was too drunk to remember, thus she was too drunk to consent. I understand it occurred in the 70s, but it made me uncomfortable to read about how quickly she accepted it and accepted his word for the truth.