I recently read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and after flipping through the first couple of pages it was clear to me that this book was special. Eleanor is a feminist, stubborn, and troubled women in her 30’s who is essentially “fine”. Living alone in an apartment in Glasgow, Scotland and at a job she’s had since graduation – she has her routines. Working a 9 to 5, pizza and vodka on Fridays and then weekends spent alone until she gets on the bus for work again on Monday morning. Similar to A Man Called Ove, Honeyman’s novel makes your heart ache, wishing you could jump into the pages and help the character see the light in herself, and see that there is so much more to life than surviving.
“There are scars on my heart, just as thick, as 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.”
Honeyman unfolds Eleanor’s troubled past throughout the novel, starting with mysterious phone calls to her mother and a mention of a noticeable scar running down the side of her face. We don’t find out what actually happened until Eleanor finally gets the courage to tell people and opens herself up. Even within her delusional inner monologue, the reader isn’t let into her past, to her real self. When the opportunity to help someone arises, a man who falls in the street, Eleanor’s morals and social habits are challenged. Is everyone else wrong, or is she the one who’s different?
Trapped inside the opinions of her abusive mother, and oblivious to the danger of her ex-boyfriend’s abuse and assault, Eleanor unknowingly needs a friend in her life. Judgemental co-workers mock her overly polite manner until Raymond, the IT guy, enters the scene, determined to converse with Eleanor and crack her shell. Eleanor is out of touch, with humans, with reality, with technology, and with the world. Similar to Ove’s iPad buying blunder, Eleanor purchases a laptop and eventually a smartphone in search of her sudden love interest. Eleanor sets out on her “project”, a person in fact whom she has set her sights on. She lets him consume her thoughts, delusional that they’ll be married one day even though they’ve never met. He’s the lead singer of a band who is handsome, but of course turns out to be a total asshole. She inevitably improves herself – a nice haircut, black boots, Bobbi Brown makeup (although she can never seem to find Bobbi herself), and some skinny jeans.
Subtle realizations are weaved in with hopeful moments that made me cheer for Eleanor. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a plea to those who say they are “fine”, telling them that the world is lovely, relationships with people can be extraordinary, and there is so much more to life than being “fine”. And that when family fails, friends can fill in the cracks if you let them in.
“Noticing details, that was good. tiny slivers of life – they all added up and helped you to feel that you too could be a fragment, a little piece of humanity who usefully filled a space, however minuscule”.
such sweet things 