I believe that this is published in the USA today, but it has been out in other parts of the world for a while now. Coupland is, of course, famous for writing about and thus creating generation X, the post baby-boom generation, one which started in 1961. The central character in his latest work, Liz Dunn, is 36 when the Hale-Bopp comet passed over Earth in 1997: it does not take a genius to work out that she was an early member of GenX. In Generation X the book, Coupland focussed on three characters who had quit the ratrace, or in his words, left their "pointless jobs done grudgingly to little applause". I haven't actually read that yet, but it seems that there are some echoes of it in Eleanor Rigby. Liz is still, in her 40's, stuck in a dead end job, working in a horrible cubicle with no social relationships at all and a family which seems to be bound together more by a sense of duty than any kind of affection.

Here is how Liz describes her life, in the opening chapter:

Like anybody, I wanted to find out if my life was ever going to make sense, or maybe even feel like a story. In the wake of Hale-Bopp, I realized that my life, while technically adequate, had become all it was ever going to be. If I could just keep things going on their current even keel for a few more decades, the coroner could dump me into a peat bog without my ever having once gone fully crazy... [S]taring up at the comet, I decided that instead of demanding certainty out of life, I now wanted peace. No more trying to control everything - it was now time to go with the flow...

Of course, we're born alone, and when we die, we join every living thing that's ever existed - and ever will. When I'm dead I won't be lonely any more - I'll be joining a big party. Sometimes at the office, when the phones aren't ringing, and when I've completed my daily paperwork, and when The Dwarf to Whom I Report is still out to lunch, I sit in my chest high sage green cubicle and take comfort in knowing that since I don't remember where I was before I was born, why should I be worried about where I go after I die?

In any event, were you to enter the cubicle farm that is Landover Communication Systems, you probably wouldn't notice me, daydreaming or otherwise. I long ago learned to render myself invisible. I pull myself into myself, and my eyes become stale and dull.

A bit later on, she says:

The Liz Dunns of this world tend to get married, and then twenty three months after their wedding and the birth of their first child they establish sensible, lower-maintenance hairdoes that last them forever. Liz Dunns take classes in croissant baking, and would rather chew on soccer balls than deny their children muesli. They own one sex toy, plus one cowboy fantasy that accompanies its use...