Plot Synopsis
The novel has two distinct plot movements, separated by a break in the narrative flow. The first part of the novel involves two retellings: the story of Liz Dunn’s trip to Europe and her pregnancy, and the story of the reemergence into her life of her child, Jeremy, who is dying of Multiple Sclerosis.
As a teenager, Liz went on a trip to Europe, her one big expressive moment. It is on this trip where Liz became very drunk and during a memory blackout, lost her virginity in Italy to a man she cannot remember. From this experience, she became pregnant with her child, Jeremy, who was put up for adoption, and went in and out of foster families for much of his young life.
He arrives back into Liz’s life when Liz is at a low point of loneliness. His illness is terminal, and because of drug abuse, Jeremy does not have much longer to live. Jeremy’s introduction into Liz’s life rattles the lonely world she has constructed, opening up her and her world.
The first part of the novel, narrated by Liz, jumps between these two moments, constantly reminding the reader that these are moments in the past. There is a symbolic page break between the first section, which takes place in the past, and the second section, which takes place in the novel’s present.
In the novel’s present, Jeremy has died. Liz finds a meteorite that she takes to be a very precious object. She sleeps with it under her pillow to keep it close. She eventually, through a list of circumstances, decides to travel to Europe to find Jeremy’s father, and her trip to Europe again leads her to a world of excitement, police and army incidents, and a reunion with Jeremy’s father.
Read more about this topic: Eleanor Rigby (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)