You know when someone asks how you are and you say “Fine”, despite the fact that your day/week/month/year has been completely shit?
That basically sums up the main character in Gail Honeyman’s smash debut, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Obviously Eleanor Oliphant isn’t fine. In fact, she’s a lonely young woman, set in her rather odd ways. A chain of events forces her to re-evaluate life.
I enjoyed Eleanor’s odd take on things and her formal, stilted interactions with others were strangely endearing.
Save for the exquisite oeuvre of a certain Mr Lomond, I have yet to find a genre of music I enjoy; it’s basically audible physics, waves and energized particles, and, like most sane people, I have no interest in physics. It therefore struck me as bizarre that I was humming a tune from Oliver! I mentally added the exclamation mark, which, for the first time ever, was appropriate.
And of a visiting social worker she says that she’s “checking to make sure that I’m not storing my own urine in demijohns or kidnapping magpies and sewing them into pillowcases.”
However, I found some of Eleanor’s personality traits and behaviour incongruent. Eleanor is intelligent, reads the newspaper every day, watches television and lives in a big city but didn’t know what McDonald’s was. She sometimes shows obsessive-compulsive tendencies, particularly in relation to hygiene and security, but not always. She’s wary of people she doesn’t know and yet she hands herself over to the professionals for her first wax and a makeover, without any hesitation. These small inconsistencies made it difficult to trust where Honeyman was taking me with Eleanor (a lot of readers interpret Eleanor’s character as socially awkward or on the autism spectrum, however, I thought that her self-imposed isolation and strict routines were a coping mechanism for her childhood trauma, as was her self-medication with vodka).
There were parts of the plot that were predictable from the outset – that bothered me less than all the hints and drawn-out suspense surrounding Eleanor’s early trauma. The main plot twist, when it comes, is unexpected and delivered in a way that while believable, was pretty annoying.
Despite this, I did enjoy the book. It was light, and had some very funny and touching moments. I think the overall themes of loneliness and isolation were well executed and it was interesting to see loneliness in a character who was relatively young – too often these are the stories of the elderly and yet we know that loneliness is not age-specific.
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.
Eleanor’s yearning for connection is beautifully expressed – she’s not looking for pity, she’s not demanding understanding –
I do not light up a room when I walk into it. No one longs to see me or hear my voice. I do not feel sorry for myself, not in the least. These are simply statements of fact.
Eleanor simply wants a meaningful connection.
3/5 Entertaining.
After some contemplation, I had opted for a square of indeterminate white fish, which was coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried and then inserted between an overly sweet bread bun, accompanied, bizarrely, by a processed cheese slice, a limp lettuce leaf, and some salty, tangy white slime which bordered on obscenity… I am no epicure; however, surely it is a culinary truth universally acknowledged that fish and cheese do not go together? Someone really ought to tell Mr McDonald.
I’ve been wary of the hype surrounding this one and I think I’ll give it a miss, now. I didn’t get on with The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry which I suspect is similar to Eleanor in tone.
I haven’t read Harold Fry but I have seen Eleanor compared to it (and also to The Rosie Project). The hype around this book makes me slightly uncomfortable because it does deal with trauma (and some people need a trigger warning for that) and I’m always wary when books get loads of hype (sets my expectations high). You won’t miss anything by giving this book a pass.
Me too, A Life in Books, I heard this one talked about on the ABC book show and decided it wasn’t for me…
I was aware of the hype but only via Goodreads and blogs – I haven’t read/heard anything about the author but I am curious as to what the inspiration for the character was. Coincidentally, I’m reading an Anita Brookner at the moment – she has the monopoly on middle-aged lonely women (!) so would be interested to know why Honeyman added the trauma to Eleanor’s story, as opposed to simply telling the story of a lonely woman who seeks connection.
Well, it wouldn’t sell without the obligatory trauma, would it?
I agree, Brookner is brilliant at depicting the emptiness of ordinary life…
Stand-by a review (I use that word loosely) of a Brookner I didn’t much enjoy…
I wait with bated breath!
A friend of mine read this and she was very upset, she said it isn’t a light and heartwarming book at all, as advertised. Very frustrating!
The writing style is light and Eleanor’s observations about things are funny but to be clear, this story is about trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder and from that point-of-view it should come with a trigger warning.
I was wary of the hype, but your review and Sarah’s at Hard Book Habit have convinced me to give this a try. I feel I’m going in with moderate expectations rather than astronomical ones!
Yes, lower your expectations. I read it quickly and it wasn’t taxing. I imagine you’ll read through a similar lens as me – Honeyman positions Eleanor as potentially on the spectrum or socially awkward but that didn’t work for me from the outset because of particular details – had I not understood trauma and PTSD, I might have gone along with Honeyman’s angle and been more surprise by the ending.
I really hate how now that readers are looking for diverse books, they see that as an opportunity to diagnose characters. My creative writing students did that this past semester (writing characters with mental disabilities). I mean, who do people think they are that they see some behaviors or know a couple of traits that a person with autism or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia has and go “ah, yes, clearly I am a trained psychologist and understand you better than you understand yourself.” I mean, come on, people!! Okay, whew, I’m ranting. But thanks for not labeling a fictional character with a mental disorder–that’s what I’m trying to say.
I’ve been studying counselling for a couple of years and despite being exposed to various mental health and personality conditions, I would always be very wary of making a ‘diagnosis’ about such conditions. As you no doubt understand, labels are a double-edged sword and the problem with mental health and personality disorder labels is that some people define themselves by the label.
The counselor at my college isn’t licensed in diagnosing learning disabilities, so even though he’s the guy who sends professors like me the accommodations for students, he’s not the one who makes the diagnosis. That has to come from a special kind of doctor/counselor. The whole thing about my students giving their characters “mental disorders” to justify them being killers or unaccountable for choices drove me up a wall. I soon learned that many of them were enrolled in Psychology 101. I think that professor and I should have a chat to lead students away from playing amateur doctor.
Absolutely agree and I think that Multiple Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality are the ones that amateurs most readily exploit. I understand the fascination for Pysch 101 students but if they are continuing down that path of study, they also need ethical maturity to frame their knowledge.
I think the issue with Eleanor Oliphant, at least for me, is that Honeyman seems to be conflating antisocial behaviours that tend to arise from separate sources (social awkwardness is not the same thing as autistic-spectrum behaviour, which is not the same thing as trauma), and, moreover, she wants us to laugh at Eleanor for displaying these traits while also pitying her, which opens the book up to charges of either cruelty or obliviousness.
I agree about the spectrum/ awkwardness/ trauma – that element made me uncomfortable and there’s danger in generalising peoples’ experiences (and creating a raft of ‘armchair experts’ who have read one book about trauma and then think all experiences are the same – much like what The Rosie Project did for (against) Asperger’s).
I found the humour in the book to be oddly mixed. I liked Eleanor’s observations – some were very insightful, especially around office-politics – but other scenes, such as her wax and makeover, seemed designed to laugh at her, not with.
I don’t regard battered square (or long) shapes as fish.
😂
Great review. I’ve had this book on my “saved” list at the library, but may skip it.
I really enjoyed this book. Fun fact: I think Reese Witherspoon’s production company has bought the rights to make this book into a movie. Looking forward to Honeyman’s next effort.
Someone mentioned that to me – if it’s as good as her Big Little Lies adaption, it will be terrific.
Pingback: Three short reviews | booksaremyfavouriteandbest
Pingback: Four quick reviews | booksaremyfavouriteandbest