(no subject)

[eirias]

I have read some very good books this summer, and as if to prove to myself that other sorts of books exist, I just finished an awful one: Eleanor Rigby, by Douglas Coupland. It had every kind of misguided drama in the book, and then some: Teen pregnancy! Mysterious visions! A dead transvestite! Life-altering illnesses! The import of heavenly events! Love at first sight, with an international man of mystery! I sort of expected better from Douglas Coupland; his brand of whimsy worked well in Microserfs (geeks can actually be pretty whimsical people), but when trying to write a fat, lonely middle-aged accountant, he just got stuck in a wall of stereotypes with which the whimsy clashed horribly. Don't read it!

Comments

[knell.livejournal.com]

Coupland's more recent output (everything since Girlfriend in a Coma, IMO) has pretty much all had that effect on me. JPod was sufficiently disappointing as a successor to Microserfs that I didn't even bother grinding all the way through it.