Monday, September 27, 2004

A teenage girl's view of Rome

"To me, the thought of Rome -- a city adorned with genitalia rather than vinyl siding and stucco -- seemed improbable. I had to see this place. In the weeks leading up to the trip's charter airline departure, I kept waiting for a TV studio buzzer to sound, for an audience to shriek at me, telling me that it was all a big prank." -- Douglas Coupland, Eleanor Rigby.

A work colleague of mine has just set off for a holiday in Rome. It took me a worrying amount of effort not to quote that at her.

[Eleanor Rigby, by Douglas Coupland (Fourth Estate, 2004). May be considered a more satisfactory answer to a friend of mine's question about Douglas Coupland characters and ageing; more satisfactory altogether, in fact, than many of his recent novels, despite the standard slide into fantasy.]

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