Loneliness is a pearl of great price among novelists. Fiction, drawing so much of its inspiration from groups, communities and societies, nevertheless cherishes the idea of solitude, of the hero or heroine outcast and apart, thrown upon their own resources for spiritual endurance. Think Robinson Crusoe among his goats, Jane Eyre roaming the corridors and attics of Thornfield, Fanny Price learning the value of non-inclusiveness from her selfish Bertram cousins or the peopled wilderness created by Dickens in Bleak House.
Douglas Coupland’s latest novel invokes...
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