Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

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By Gail Honeyman
avg rating
14 reviews
Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.
Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.
One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.
Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than… fine?
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An original and thought-provoking book which I couldn't put down.
What an amazing book! One I recommend to almost everyone.
This ended up in some plans being cancelled as did not want to move until I had finished and it left somewhat of a void once finished as the story was so beautifully conveyed.
Everyone in the bookclub finished this book. We all enjoyed it and some people even saw the end coming but they still enjoyed it. We all enjoyed that the ending was non-traditional but at the same time a "good" ending.
We had a discussion about loneliness and how endemic it is becoming certainly within the UK if not other parts of the world. It's something that although we realise it's happening it's hard to admit it's happening to us. We felt that if someone says they are lonely that they might be judged for that, almost as if it's their fault for being on their own when often it really isn't it's just circumstances. We went on to talk about whether we know our neighbours and whether they might be lonely but how hard it sometimes is to reach out a hand to help.
We all liked Eleanors personality even though she is possibly a difficuly person to get along with. We had a discussion as to whether we would like her and would have made such an effort with her as Raymond did. We were sad to say that we probably wouldn't have. This made us all feel like we should be less judgemental and more open to helping people, but this is hard to do.
We discussed the use of counselling by Eleanor and how she might have tried it in the past but felt it wasn't for her, but maybe this time it worked better as she was actually ready to accept the help.
We also had a discussion about the difference between men and women in terms of the pressure to look like each other. We wondered if men felt that in order to fit in they need to look a certain way or not. As we have no men in the group currently this question wasn't answered for us.
We actually gave it 7 out of 10.
Read with Gloucester Book Club
I love this book. As well as it being a good story, there are layers upon layers of meaning in it. This is an enlightening book of what it is to survive childhood trauma and live with C-PTSD as an adult. I was very impressed with the fidelity of the character to the story - everything she said and did made sense to build the picture of who she was. As well as inevitably coming to love Eleanor, there are delightful contributing characters in her present life as well as downright evil characters from her past which poses the question of how good or bad humans are or can be.
Excellent for a group discussion
A very quirky novel. I enjoyed Eleanor’s story and would recommend this novel.
Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine,
HarperCollins (2017)
Warning: contains multiple plot spoilers from the start
1
This is a popular book. It has won prizes. The lustrous Jane Garvey, no less, praised it on Woman's hour. For the first two thirds, I found it extraordinary―but for reasons I’m sure would horrify Ms Honeyman and her devotees.
The protagonist, a woman in her thirties, is clearly suffering from both post traumatic stress disorder and serious attachment disorder. She has chosen to deal with it (in the absence of any professional intervention) by locking herself down. (It is odd that not even one of the social workers with whom she has been in contact with for twenty years has suggested any therapeutic intervention, given the social workers know the aetiology of her condition.)
She goes to work, does her work, goes home. At the weekends, she drinks two bottles of vodka. She has no social life. No family. However, as the title says, she believes she is ‘completely fine’. And, at a superficial level, she really believes this. She narrates the book and, just occasionally, allows us to see that a little more insight fights to the surface before being repressed again.
As I read it, over and over a single thought just kept coming back to me: this is the most sadistic book I have read in a long time. Gail Honeyman creates a fictional character for the sole purpose of mocking her, which she does relentlessly, only pausing to invite the reader to join in.
For starters, the name. Of course, Oliphant is a respectable, if unusual, surname. But Eleanor Oliphant? Too close to ‘Nellie the elephant’ for me. (And Gail Honeyman, by the way? Gale’s honey is, as Eleanor would say, a popular comestible.) I know that Eleanor (spelt differently) and Marianne are the sisters in Sense and sensibility, Elinor representing sense (rationality) and Marianne sensibility (emotion). Are we supposed to infer that, with the death of Eleanor’s sister, Marianne, all emotion dies in Eleanor? If so, this is Ms Honeyman’s little joke: the idea doesn’t seem to strike Eleanor, even though S&S is Eleanor’s second favourite book.
Eleanor is then given a tone of voice, at once knowing and arch yet (we are supposed to believe) entirely ignorant of anything in the real world. Much hilarity ensues at Eleanor’s expense.
For example, early on the book, she decides to have a ‘bikini wax’, a procedure about which she is utterly innocent (pages 13-17). Of course, she chooses at random a style which involves complete depilation. She’s appalled, but we are invited to laugh at her. (This incident is never referred to again, so I guess that an editor decided it was worth getting in a cheap laugh early.)
There’s the episode where she goes to her GP because of a bad back which she diagnoses as being down to her breasts. Having weighed them on the kitchen scales, she is concerned they may be too heavy (7). This story seems to be there to establish that she stockpiles over-the-counter analgesics, but this isn’t referred to again either.
And the pizza delivered to her door. ‘I wondered how they managed with the black pepper. Would the man bring a pepper mill with him? Surely he wouldn’t grind it over the pizza while he stood on the doorstep?...’ (21). To the extent that these concerns are presented as real ones for Eleanor, we are laughing at her, not with her.
A lengthy part of the book circulates around Eleanor’s obsession with a clearly incompetent pop entertainer. This personality is used as the catalyst which gets Eleanor to improve her looks, starting with her pubic hair, thereby becoming more attractive. Even though she fails to get the
Of course, we realise he’s useless a long way before she does. So we can laugh at her repeatedly making a fool of herself, albeit this foolishness arises from a particular appalling childhood trauma and a generally appalling mother. Hilarious.
In a frankly credulity-stretching episode, she finds this pop entertainer in her local Tesco’s. Stationing herself almost behind him at the checkout (well, we’ve all done that), she is interested to learn he is buying orange juice ‘with bits’, but cannot imagine what these bits are. I do not believe a single woman in her thirties, a habituée of Tesco’s, doesn’t know what the bits are in orange juice (156).
The reason I say that we are encouraged to laugh at her (the book is marketed as humorous) is that Eleanor is set up by the author as “exceptionally bright and articulate child” in a school report (61) which Honeyman contrives that Eleanor sees. Therefore it is ‘funny’ that, given how brainy she is, she ought to know some very basic stuff, but she doesn’t. It’s not her absence of experiences―which would understandably have arisen form a self-inflicted sheltered life and which might have given rise to here naivety and innocence; it’s that her responses are coming from a place which, in anyone else, we would have called stupidity. Honeyman makes sure we laugh at Eleanor, by giving her an arch and, frankly, pompous choice of words which makes her response to events ridiculous.
And so it goes on. Honeyman makes Eleanor trash herself over and over. The trope becomes tedious: how would anyone, dear reader, imagine that someone didn’t know X? Well, Eleanor doesn’t know it! So, let’s have a good laugh at this damaged, unhappy woman with serious mental health problems.
2
Interweaved into this story so far is the frankly remarkable Raymond. Honeyman is careful to make Eleanor describe the attractive aspects of his personality, though they are slow to reveal themselves, amongst all his physical shortcomings and his behavioural inexactitudes.
Early on, they both witness an old man fall over in the street and go to help him. This event serves to unite the two in some shambolic way.
The Eleanor/Raymond anti-romance, which unrolls over most of the book, is well told. I was entirely convinced by the pacing and by the responses of the two characters to each other, once you accept the frankly unlikely characters in the first place. But Honeyman sinks too often into mawkishness and self-pity (Eleanor’s, not Honeyman’s).
The thing about Raymond is that he is nice. And the old man, Sammy, whom they visit in hospital, is nice. And Sammy’s family is nice. And Raymond’s mum is nice. And Eleanor’s boss is nice. Even Mr Dewan, who runs the corner shop and only gets a bit part in the book, is nice.
After the mockery of Eleanor, this is a second big problem with the book. Everyone is nice.
I swear that no-one, except Eleanor (whose sarcasm is the only redeeming feature of the book), at any point has a harsh word to say about anyone. OK, Eleanor’s colleagues are a bit bitchy at the start, but they are just a faceless chorus. Raymond lets Laura, a relative of Sammy, sit on his knee. But he reassures Eleanor that Laura is ‘too high maintenance’―a term Eleanor, of course, has never heard before―so no danger there then.
But in the real world noone is unremittingly nice. Still less is everyone nice. I get that Honeyman’s point is that a little kindness goes a long way―I’m with Derren Brown when he said, ‘The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness’ *―but it wouldn’t have hurt the author to make at least some of her characters vaguely believable. People can be kind and still exhibit less than flattering characteristics. In this book, the worst you can say about someone is that he isn’t wearing socks.
3
Honeyman doesn’t seem to realise she has created a character with PTSD and an attachment disorder (at one point Eleanor says she has ‘clinical depression’―I’m sure she has, but that isn’t the half of it), so the scenes with the therapist don’t convince. It is a remarkably brief series of sessions.
(Though the bit where the therapist appears to be standing immediately the other side of the door when Eleanor knocks certainly does. Do they all do that?)
The book attempts to show that, once she attends to her nails and gets her hair cuts, she becomes acceptable and accepted by her colleagues (presumably she doesn’t show them the bikini waxing). This may well happen in reality but the way it is described here is trite.
The revelation at the last minute that Mummy has been dead all along really doesn’t ring true and is, from the point of the plot, unnecessary. If Honeyman is interested in the consequences―the good, if unintended, consequences―of a random act of kindness, she doesn’t need to make one if the characters suddenly become imaginary.
And, given the unremitting niceness of everyone else, Mummy made a good, if wholly in-credible, foil. Mummy sounds too much as if she is calling from a prison (there are asides to other inmates). The Eleanor who is narrating (as opposed to the Eleanor she is narrating about) knows that Mummy didn’t survive and, as the narrator, she is being disingenuous in presenting ‘Mummy’ as she does.
It is mildly signalled earlier on. When her potplant dies, Eleanor writes, ‘The plant, though, was the only living link with my childhood… the only thing, apart from me, that had survived’ (261).
Eleanor’s insight at the time the events are happening is inconsistent to say the least. The narrator, telling the story at some distance in time (I assume) from the events, has clearly recovered enough to gain a lot more insight: ‘He looked like he was going to cry―it must be all the wine. It does make people overly emotional, so they say. I could feel the unasked question hovering between us like a ghost’ (247).
Because Honeyman refuses to give Eleanor any insight (which is fair enough, given the condition she’s in), the whole thing is superficial. That’s not to say that, in this respect, much contemporary fiction isn’t the same. But one does wonder how the Eleanor we have left at the end of the book is capable of writing the book in the first place.
With thanks to fellow members of Gloucester book club for some of these insights.
* Derren Brown, Confessions of a conjuror, Transworld (2010)
© 2018, Jeremy Marchant
I neither particularly liked nor disliked this book, neither particularly liked nor disliked, or even cared about, the main characters. The book read as if it was intended to be a future film script: the studiously inserted humorous cameos were all too easily imaginable in a film setting, with the audience obediently laughing. I came to find Eleanor too artificial a construct, her language overly mannered, excessively pedantic. There were many contradictions between her supposed inability to participate in mundane social interaction, contrasted with the fact that she had attended university for three years, had lived for several years with a man, albeit in an abusive relationship and held down a job surrounded by fellow workers. She was set up as some form of emotionally stunted Cinderella, about to be liberated from her isolation by the kindness of a man. The ending was spoiled for me in that I guessed the denouement fairly early on - there were indications. This was a book that attempted to discuss some dark issues: childhood abuse, disfigurement, rejection, loneliness, post traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, attempted suicide: yet this sat uncomfortably with "laugh now" interjections. I am sure it will make a commercially successful film.
Read as part of Gloucester
Book Club
Lovely book, beautifully written account of Eleanor who has suffered some kind of trauma in her life which makes it hard for her to completely interact with the outside world. Employed in an office, she spends most of her spare time in routines which involve drinking vodka alone..... until she meets Raymond!
Funny, poignant - Bridget Jones meets the Rosie Project!
What a fantastic book to kick start our new book club with and one which got a resounding thumbs up from all our group. The book takes you on a surprising journey with Eleanor as she starts to reveal her many layers and begins to make changes in her life. The combination of humour alongside tragedy makes for a compelling read. We really enjoyed how the characters and their relationships were developed especially that of Eleanor and Raymond and were left wanting more. The book is thought provoking and one which we all thought we would revisit again. Looking forward to Gail Honeyman's next book.
This book is a roller coaster ride of emotions, it leaves you breathless with laughter and sobbing uncontrollably. Elinor Oliphant is a lost soul in the modern world just getting by the best way she can. The book examines the way human interactions impact on our lives in a multitude of ways.
I don't want to give too much away, just read it, it's fantastic.
I was afraid that after all the hype about this novel it would turn out to be mediochre or worse. I couldn't have been more wrong. What an absolute delight of a book from start to finish. It's really well written and manages to be simultaneously face-achingly funny and heartachingly sad. The characters all feel real, we all know people like them, and the situations in which we meet them are all totally believable. The writing feels as genuine and honest as Eleanor. It's one of those rare books that will stay with me for a long time and I will be recommending it to anyone who has somehow managed to avoid reading yet.
Beautifully written, a great story showing the power of kindness. The writing is so real, delicate and seamless that I could not stop reading it. A word of warning: tissues will be required as it will touch the hardest of hearts. An absolutely stunning debut. I look forward to reading more from Gail Honeyman
Absolutely loved this book ....lovely watching the characters develop. Very funny in parts and tragic in others. The end brought happy tears ...so well written.
This was a wonderful book - it will touch your heart and bring a tear to your eye. Great characters that you can't help but root for!