Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Penguin Books, 2017
Meet Eleanor Oliphant. She struggles with appropriate social skills and says exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three begin to rescue one another from their lives of isolation. Will Eleanor find a way to repair her profoundly damaged heart and learn that she, too, can find friendship and love?
Prepare yourself before reading Eleanor Oliphant. The title and short synopsis indicate light, even comedic, entertainment.
Instead, readers are drawn into Eleanor’s troubling—and increasingly unreliable—narrative. Sensitive readers may find that Eleanor’s extraordinary loneliness, sense of rejection, and disillusionment touch their own pain points. And anyone who has coped with profound loss by trying to control the remaining fragments will identify with Eleanor.
Yet Eleanor often gives us reason to smile. And although the story does not wrap up neatly, it ends with a sense of promise.
Reader, tread purposefully into Eleanor Oliphant’s world and, in reading as we do in living, hang on to every hint of hope. And then let us consider this: Can we love Eleanor just the way she is?
