Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine By Gail Honeyman

A beautiful story about trauma, self discovery, and love.

Eleanor’s voice is endearing, witty and heartbreakingly captivating. She pulled me in and kept me listening as she came into her own like a rainbow.

Eleanor, Eleanor, oh darling Eleanor: a surprising, deeply affecting character. A character that is unlike any I’ve read in recent memory. She is an endearing misfit and a charming underdog that I feel if we are honest with ourselves, we all will relate to. A piercing character that made me sit up and think about the not so savory things about myself and my own life. I think many women of a certain age – post 20s before 50, will sharply relate to Eleanor in some way. Part of me getting the most out of this book and allowing its lessons to penetrate through, was in letting go of any pretentious thinking I had that Eleanor was a fictional character. Because no, she is not fictional. She is very real. Look out, not even far, and you’ll see her: at school, at the cubicle next to yours, at the supermarket, at church, at the gym, at the airport, down the street, two doors down from your bedroom, she’s there.

Eleanor is the type of character that I perceive had she been written about a century or two ago, her fate would be different from what we read here. Even more tragic, which is saying a lot. In contemporary times when young women [and men] have access to all manner of comfort, countless entertainment options, myriad ways of communication, seemingly endless avenues of pleasures, Eleanor finds herself lost in the fray. She is barely visible, she is inaudible, heart-breakingly lonely and pining for the tiniest of human connection. Like a mustard seed floating in the Pacific, without compass, with only the rising and setting sun its company.

Immediately on page 3, I was taken by Eleanor’s story. She is witty, she is smart. She is bitingly sassy, perceptive, wise beyond her years. Barely anything gets by her. Eleanor has a gift to see others as they likely are, yet she is unable to see herself for her own circumstances. Circumstances that are more serious than she herself knows. It has been a long time since a character could in one stream of their consciousness make me laugh, make me cry, and make me sit back and think about my own place in the world.

In our current age of conceited Instagram posts, vacuous tweets, infantile snapchats, plus the vapid pop culture lifestyle that insipid faux celebs try to pass off to fans as enviable in order to seek validation – Eleanor, like many of us, is hurting and drowning amidst all the fakery. To cope, she has built a wall around herself, one which she thinks protects her, not knowing that the higher the wall, the further she alienates herself from the potential kindness of strangers. Eleanor’s tragic past as well as her sullen present are wrought with an underlying layer of sorrow. A sorrow that Gail Honeyman skillfully reveals at the methodical pace of someone peeling the fibrous layers of an acrid, soon to spoil onion. I say onion because once fully disclosed, the reader, like I was, will no doubt be on the verge of tears.

I enjoyed Eleanor’s story immensely and I liked Honeyman’s writing of her. She is unlike any female character I’ve read in a long time. I do however wished the author had written a longer story, delving deeper into Eleanor’s past, and being more descriptive into Eleanor’s earlier years. Had she done so, it would have made this book 5-stars for me. Despite some room for improvement in the overall story, ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ is a tragically beautiful, powerful read and I highly recommend it. I recommend for women between the age of 20 to 50. I especially recommend it to teen girls, girls who are still discovering themselves, the ones who think the smallest of inconvenience is the end of the world. I highly recommend this book to men of all ages: dads, boyfriends, sons, husbands, male bosses, so they get to know one example of what their daughters, their girlfriends, their mothers, their wives, their female associates may be going through internally.

Lastly, there are two sentences on page 5, two of many that I highlighted during my reading and I’ve attached an image of – that I dare anyone to read and not truthfully admit that they themselves have not at least once felt this way in their life. These two sentences fully encapsulate who Eleanor is, and what her life is like in these wretched times. Pain and loneliness are universal, yet we each suffer as if we are a population of one.

Gail Honeyman’s charming, quirky, and resilient Eleanor Oliphant might just be one of my favorite characters I’ve met in a long time. Eleanor’s transformation from the woman she was in the beginning to the stronger, improved version of herself in the end was incredibly sad to read but also uplifting and inspiring at the same time.

“I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. 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.”

Eleanor Oliphant is painfully socially inept and completely not attuned to social decencies, an outcome of her horrendous childhood. She spends her weekdays working in the finance department of a graphic design company and avoiding her judgmental co-workers and her weekends drinking the liter or two of vodka she purchases from her local convenience store. Her life is regimented, structured, and very, very boring. The monotony of her life interrupted when she and the new IT guy, Raymond, help an elderly man who passed out on the sidewalk after work. These chain of events and a little bit of fate take Eleanor on an emotional journey she wasn’t planning on taking but one she has needed for a very long time.

“My phone doesn’t ring often–it makes me jump when it does–and it’s usually people asking if I’ve been missold Payment Protection Insurance. I whisper I know where you live to them, and hang up the phone very, very gentle.

When I started this book, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Eleanor. She is blunt and judgmental. What comes out of her mouth is often unintentionally funny because she is just so emotionally and socially stunted. I laughed out loud quite a bit even though Eleanor wasn’t making jokes. Like, the time she went to get a bikini wax and the esthetician asked her if she wanted a Tiffani, Brazilian, or a Hollywood wax. Eleanor said, “Holly would, and so would Eleanor.” There is a naïveté and innocence to her character that is completely endearing and charming, though there were moments Honeyman was asking the reader to suspend disbelief a little too far. When I finished the novel, I realized that I came to love Eleanor along the way, all the crooked and unique parts of her character.

A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who’s wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I think that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It’s not as though I’m expecting a reply. I’m fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.

This book reminded me so much of an off-the-wall indie movie, complete with quirky characters and a great friendship storyline. I reach a point about a third of the way where I just loved where Honeyman was taking the story.

The cast of characters in this novel was what made it that much more enjoyable. We meet Raymond, the new guy at work, who Eleanor describes as an unattractive overweight man who smokes and walks on the balls of his feet. What he lacks in conventional beauty, he makes up for in heart. He’s such a good guy who loves his mom and over time, comes to really care about Eleanor. Sammy, the older gentleman Eleanor and Raymond help, is vivacious, sprite, and so great!

“These days, loneliness is the new cancer—a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.”

But the highlight of the novel was seeing Eleanor blossom and start to deal with her own pain. Despite the title, Eleanor Oliphant wasn’t completely fine but she will be. Uplifting and hopeful, this novel is one I will come back to, just so I can spend time with Eleanor just a little bit longer.

Audiobook Comments:
After reading this book, I picked it right back up again on audiobook. The audiobook is really great and I really loved the narrator’s Eleanor. Her dry, deadpan delivery was absolutely perfect! Highly recommended!

* Thanks to the Penguin First Reads program and Penguin Random House Audio for providing me a review copy for review!