Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

One thing led to another, and I found myself browsing my old Goodreads account. If you're unfamiliar with Goodreads, it's basically a website that makes you feel bad about how many (or how little) books you've read in a year. Kidding, but . . . maybe some truth there. I wish I had the dedication to read a hundred-plus books in a year, but entertainment for me often looks like binging Emma Chamberlain Youtube videos and spending too much money at coffee shops. However, I'd like to think I read quality over quantity, or at least, that's what I tell myself.

Back to Goodreads. My most prolific year of reading was 2022, clocking in at 58 recorded books. I don't have a certain genre I stick to, or even one I'd call a favorite, so I read a bit of everything, from memoirs to YA to manga. Back then I was a bookseller at an independent bookstore, so there was a healthy pressure to read as much as possible back then. After reading we would come to work and write a little review to stick on the shelves. I'll admit that some of my favorites are too dark to write a fun review on here (The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock and The Border of Paradise by Esme Weijun Wang, for example) but I'd like to introduce a book that's up there for sure: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. It's still a very sad and tragic book, because that's the type of book I gravitate toward, don't get me wrong; themes of abuse arise, especially at the end. So, that's my unofficial trigger warning. But I like humor in dark situations, and this book is a wonderful example of that.

Eleanor Oliphant is a socially awkward woman with no filter, which leads to hilarious interactions that she doesn't realize are hilarious. She has quite the vocabulary and I just love the way she speaks. For instance, when she gets a cat, she says, "I will assume the mantle of care . . . This creature will be looked after assiduously." After a while I gave up on Googling the words she uses; context clues were usually enough. One criticism of the book is that she has Aspergers or something similar and the author uses that as the punchline, which I see merit in. However, I'm on the side of appreciation for her unabashed intelligence, and I strive to have a fraction of that in my day-to-day conversations.

Essentially, she lives a drab British life, working a monotonous office job and living alone with little social interaction. At first, she's complacent with her routine, ordering a margarita pizza every weekend and drinking Vodka all by her lonesome, but once she becomes infatuated with a celebrity, everything changes, and she decides to take more chances. Namely, a makeover. The first time she considers her appearance to have potential to gain respect and admiration from others. For someone who grew up in foster care without receiving any affection, I felt proud of her for taking a step in recognizing her worth, even if the impetus was questionable.

She makes a friend, bumbling Raymond from IT, after they mutually rescue a man in need of an ambulance. They came together in an emergency, which was a nice, wholesome moment and the beginning of their unusual friendship. You know, I won't go through the whole plot because I like to keep these posts short, but I hope this is enough to potentially interest you in the book. It's a story that I'll always remember. A story of what loneliness can do to a person, and how kindness can remedy that. Not a story of romance, which was a breath of fresh air in a world where female protagonists seem to always have to fall in love. If you're looking for that, might not be the book for you; I would recommend another one of my 2022 reads, A Pho Love Story by Loan Le. I rarely read romance, but this one was great, intertwining Vietnamese culture and a Romeo and Juliet-type trope.

So, all in all, I'd readily give Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine five stars. Yes, I'm generous with five-star ratings, but I really do stand behind this one. I still can't believe it's Honeyman's debut novel. I've heard she's working on another, but it's hard to imagine topping this novel. I hope she does, but the bookstore impact was so immense that it'll be pretty hard to follow up. Give it a try, and if you're one of those people who measure their reading activity by the year, this one might be a good one to round out 2024. Here's another good quote to convince you.

“A woman who knew her own mind and scorned the conventions of polite society. We were going to get along just fine.”