Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland

Eleanor Rigby

Douglas Coupland

Will do for wisdom teeth what Bridget Jones did for calories. A fresh and humorous observation of contemporary life, but underlying all the wit is tragedy ... the pain of loneliness. A few quirky plot twists, as the pace gathers throughout, and an unsentimental take on MS. This is an uplifting read whose message seems to be, if you can laugh at life and not take yourself too seriously, then things ain't so bad.

Extract
All of us are stuck inside our meaty bodies. I suspect that regular people are happy to be inside their bodies, whereas lonely people yearn to ditch their carcasses .... We're the people most likely to believe in reincarnation simply because we can't believe we were shackled into our meat in the first place .... The lonely, like all humans, yearn to meet that somebody who'll make us feel better about being trapped inside our species' meat-and-bone soul containment system.
Parallels
  • Egg Dancing by Liz Jensen
  • Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend
  • Bridget Jones's Diary in the Independent by Helen Fielding