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Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman

I needed this novel, I really did. I needed Eleanor. The booze. The musician. Raymond. Sam. The house plant. The shopkeeper. The cat. I needed them all. I loved Eleanor and her voice for she was witty, sarcastic, and real. She did not hold anything back and she said exactly what she felt and needed. You knew where you stood with her. I hated for this novel to end, for I knew that I would miss her as the more I got to know her, I cared a great deal about her.

 

Eleanor was a predictable person, a person that you could count on and perhaps that was because she led a boring life. Boring in my world, but to Eleanor she was a self-contained entity for she needed no one and that was the life that she had chosen. She had been working in an office as a finance clerk for the past nine years and she does her job very well. As the book opens up, I can see how organized and detailed Eleanor is and I found myself standing in her shoes a few times. She becomes inpatient with the new IT guy Raymond but they soon become good friends. Raymond is patient with Eleanor and he sees something in Eleanor that I don’t believe anyone else does. Eleanor become obsessed with a musician and it consumes her. It becomes her teenage crush and fantasy. Wanting to make a good impression, she wants everything to be perfect for the exact moment for when they will make contact.

 

There were great moments in this novel: times when her comments had me laughing, times when her spontaneity had me shaking my head, times when I wondered why Eleanor chose to be all alone, and times when I wondered if anything would happen between Eleanor and Raymond or if Eleanor choice of the musician would be her soulmate. I loved this novel, I experienced so many different emotions as I read this. There were times where I was laughing at her remarks, crying when she was in pain, cheering when she stepped out of her comfort zone and worried when she felt confused. Eleanor emerges out of her box in this novel, she realizes that there is a world out there that she has never explored and we get to experience with her part of her exploration. I highly recommend this novel, I can’t say enough about it. This is definitely one I will be rereading in the future.