Title: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Author(s) Name(s): Gail Honeyman
Published in: May, 2017
Why You Might Like This Book: Read this book if you enjoy
- British fiction,
- absurdist humour,
- female protagonist,
- stories about unexpected friendships,
- kindness and humanity,
- award-winning literature fiction,
- uplit or uplifting literature,
- tragicomedy,
- deeply emotional stories,
- recovering and healing,
- mental health,
- character-driven plots,
- witty humour,
- acceptance,
- self-acceptance,
- making new friends,
- plot twists, and
- romance sub-plots.
Who Should Avoid This Book: Avoid this book if you are triggered by or dislike
- abusive family,
- traumatic childhood,
- physical abuse,
- mental abuse,
- rape,
- trauma,
- domestic violence,
- loneliness,
- near-death experiences,
- dysfunctional families, and
- bad parenting.
“Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine” is an award-winning literary fiction book written by Gail Honeyman, published in the year 2017. If you are a fan of Fredrick Backman’s books or if you enjoyed the hit series Fleabag, most likely, you will enjoy this book as well. This debut novel by Honeyman won at least four awards including Costa First Novel Award (2017), British Book Awards (2018), National Book Awards (2018), and Audie Award (2018).
Eleanor Oliphant is a twenty-nine-year-old woman in Scotland. When she joined her company, Bob, the owner of the company saw how she was injured and hurt, and gave her the job: an accountant clerk. She had no prior work experience, only a degree in classics, nothing she was passionate about either, and since then she has been working in the same company, doing the same job. She has some colleagues – Billy, Bernadette, Janey, and Bob. but no work friends. They all are chatty and gossipy with one another but nobody likes to talk to her. They all dislike her and she doesn’t like anyone there either. During her lunch break, she reads the newspaper and solves crossword puzzles, keeping mostly to herself.
She works eight hours a day, five days a week, visits a few places at the end of the week, the same shops. She cooks and has pasta every day for dinner; she is not one of those foodies: she eats just enough to survive and have no major complaints. She speaks with her mom over the phone once a week and drinks over the weekend at home. The only visitors she’s had in her flat all year are service persons. In other words, she is lonely and tries to cope up with her loneliness, and this is the lifestyle she’s settled for.
Unbelievably, something instantly changes when she sees a handsome gentleman whom she begins liking right away, at a local pub gig one Thursday evening after work, an event she had felt compelled to attend. He was elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit; he is the kind of man her mom would call “husband material”. In her mind, she already starts building up scenarios of the two of them meeting each other the first time, dating, and getting intimate. Now, Eleanor can’t wait to meet him, invite him home, and cook for him. Her mother is going to be thrilled that she finally met “the one”. Johnny Lemond.
In the meanwhile, at work, when her computer stops working, Eleanor reaches out to the staff person in charge, a new co-worker, Raymond Gibbons. From the moment she listens to his voice message on the office phone, she develops a dislike for him. When he comes to her desk, her prejudice feels justified. He is the opposite of everything she thinks of her handsome new lover: Raymond is a young man who is nearly balding already, with skin that is too pink, dresses shabbily, hates crossword puzzles, and his mannerisms are just plain bad. But the handsome musician is who occupies Eleanor’s mind most of the time; her lifestyle and her personality must change if she wants to make herself a suitable partner for him. She begins doing things she would have never considered doing – getting a bikini wax, purchasing a laptop to “research” about her new love interest, subscribing for women’s magazines, ordering a pizza and not having wine with it, and during all these encounters, either those others are rude to her, or she perceives them as being rude, so she snaps at them.
Eleanor may not have friends but she at least has her loving mother to talk to every week, right? Not exactly. The author eloquently introduces us to her past, which would explain why she is the way she is, including the long scars she has had on her face and body, the only birthday gift she had ever received – a plant, the biannual social worker visits, all the furniture in her home, which were all donated by a charity, how the only calls she receives are from some church or religious group, and how there is hardly anyone who calls her by her name. Eleanor’s pain hits you hard!
“The best part is when they (the customer support executives) ask, at the end, Is there anything else I can help you with today, Eleanor? and I can then reply, No, no, thank you, you’ve completely and comprehensively resolved my problems. It’s always nice to hear my first name spoken aloud by a human voive, too.”
Her childhood was anything but normal; she has never seen or known her father, despite all her attempts to find out who he is and where he might be. She grew up in different foster care homes with different families and struggled to live with them all. Her mother always called her ugly and vile and was physically and mentally abusive. Even though her mother is institutionalized for her all her crimes, she still manages to control, manipulate, and humiliate Eleanor. Which is also probably why she is deeply attached to Jane Eyre. None of her classmates and peers could ever relate to her, a girl who wouldn’t know cartoons, TV, common snacks and the most popular children’s brands, and she couldn’t ever relate to them either. The only boyfriend she had had, with whom she was at the age of twenty one, Declan would punch her, hit her hard, and give her a black eye for no reason, just because he wanted to. Her problem is not that she can’t survive; Eleanor excels at surviving through the toughest of times. But can’t she want more than survival and ask for acceptance and love? And that is why when she sees her own Mr. Rochester, she puts him on a pedestal and falls in love with the idea of whom he could be.
“There are scars on my heart, just as thick, disfiguring as those on my face. I know they’re there. I hope some undamaged tissue remains, a patch through which love can come in and flow out. I hope.”
But life has other plans – unexpected circumstances bring Eleanor and Raymond closer; unlike most others she has met and interacted with, he is warm, considerate, and affectionate in general and also towards her, despite her unintentional ways of pushing people away. Through Raymond, she gets to connect with many other warm and kind-hearted people, like an old man Sammy, who gets caught in an accident and is then rescused by Raymond, Raymond’s old, ailing, yet chirpy and loving mother, Sammy’s family who thank them for saving him and invite them to come over for a party, and so on. Soon, her life changes, as she attempts to transform herself – she purchases party outfits, goes for a manicure for the first time, gets her hair done, which makes her look beautiful, gets invited to a couple of parties, where she meets more people, learns to dance at clubs, gets a promotion at work, and learns to talk to people at social events. For the first time, she misses her routine newspaper crossword and forgets to drink her usual drink because of how preoccupied her mind is with her present, which is eventful and fun, as she is suddenly surrounded by new people, all of whom are welcoming and actually not bad! Friendships can be fun, Eleanor realizes.
Interesting Quote: “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?”
The second half of the book makes you feel light-hearted, as you laugh at all the absurdist humour and the silly thoughts she has. As the life of Eleanor Oliphant is revealed to us layer by layer, as thesurvivor protagonist learns to accept herself and trust and connect with others, Honeyman reminds us that life has its ups and downs. Bad things can happen to good people, life feels unfair, some horrors chase us forever, but not all is lost, and the reader is seated with fingers crossed, wondering if it is possible for a person who has been mocked at, neglected and abused most of her life to recover and heal finally? Hope is the only way forward in a world where the past is painful and the future is uncertain. The book feels like a cocktail of deep human emotions; it makes you want to cry, it makes you laugh. It feels like a warm hug on a cold afternoon. This is a must-read for all fans of character-driven literary fiction, especially if uplit (uplifting literature) is your thing!
If you liked this book, then perhaps you should try reading the novella “The Answer Is No” by Fredrik Backman.
You can buy the book “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine” here: https://link.amazon/B00g5EB5X
