Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
I’d heard a lot about this book before my book club decided to read it, not the least of which is that they’re making a movie out of it. So with all the buzz, I went into this book with pretty high expectations.
It did take me a few chapters at the beginning to get used to Eleanor. I didn’t immediately fall in love with her as other readers did…but I did eventually. And the book had just enough well-placed sentences hinting at a a mystery in Eleanor’s past to keep me turning the pages until I got over my initial hesitation with the character.
This book, like others in a similar vein before it, thrives from its ability to put the main character in situations where they are bewildered by the actions of others…yet are painted so clearly we as the reader know exactly why the other characters reacted as they did. A Man Called Ove and The Rosie Project come to mind.
What I liked about this story in particular though is that it isn’t afraid to take us to dark places both in the main character’s history and in their psyche. No spoilers, but Eleanor’s history is painful and her low moment in the story is about as low as you can go. And then we get to watch her to try to claw her way back from that.
If you’re looking for a page-turning read to tote along on your next vacation, give this one a try. For fans of The Rosie Project, A Man Called Ove, Where’d You Go Bernadette, Something Missing, and The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime.
