“I simply didn’t know how to make things better. I could not solve the puzzle of me.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Book Title: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Author: Gail Honeyman
Publication Date: 2017
Genres: Adult Fiction
Goodreads Rating: 4.33 Stars
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Meet Eleanor Oliphant. She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully time-tabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
Then 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.
1. Oh the hype. Before reading this book, I heard about it LITERALLY EVERYWHERE. Goodreads groups. Facebook groups. Friends. So many people were talking about this book, that I was hesitant to read it. Could it really live up to the hype?
2. Yep. This book was SO GOOD. This novel is character-driven, not plot-driven, which is normally not what I read. But this character… She has depth and an amazing backstory that the author takes great pains to reveal slowly and carefully. The foreshadowing in this book is strong and present, and it really kept me on my toes, waiting for a big reveal of why Eleanor Oliphant is who she is.
3. Hello, Eleanor Oliphant. For the first part of the book, Eleanor is almost insufferable. Because this book is written in first person, we really get to see inside her thought processes, which is really what takes her from being a super annoying person to someone you can almost sympathize with. There were many times that I found myself saying (out loud, to the concern of my husband and pets), “UGH ELEANOR!” and rolling my eyes. Hard. Throughout the book, though, you get to watch her grow and discover elements about her past that really explain why she is so obstinate, so stubborn, and so (what seems like) insensitive.
4. As the story unfolds… Pro tip: Do not read part two in public. Just don’t. I started that part in a doctor’s office waiting room, and it was SO HARD to shake the feelings when they called me back to the room. The nurse probably thought I was crazy because I was slightly crying and very enveloped in my feelings.
5. But overall, this is a happy, hopeful book. Yes, there are some very dark revelations that come out, most of which I was not expecting (especially based on the blurb, which realllllly reveals nothing about this book…). But we experience it as Eleanor experiences it, and Eleanor is very matter-of-fact (always) and she, despite everything, lives with a serious optimism that is quite contagious.
6. Get out your dictionary. As a bonus, Eleanor is very well-spoken, and I had to Google more than a few words, which I generally never have to do in a book! I (being the nerd I am) really appreciated the vocabulary lesson and her insistence on proper grammar. (I MEAN. Just look at the quotes below. This was such a quotable book!)
This novel was poignant and disturbing at times, but it had a positive outlook and really made me care about the characters.
“Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering?”
“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”
“…in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder.”
“There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock. The threads tighten slightly from Monday to Friday.”
“There was nothing to tempt me from the choice of desserts, so I opted instead for a coffee, which was bitter and lukewarm. Naturally, I had been about to pour it all over myself but, just in time, had read the warning printed on the paper cup, alerting me to the fact that hot liquids can cause injury. A lucky escape, Eleanor! I said to myself, laughing quietly. I began to suspect that Mr. McDonald was a very foolish man indeed, although, judging from the undiminished queue, a wealthy one.”
“Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.”
“When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life.”
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