Review: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Title: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Author: Gail Honeyman
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: May 9, 2017
Publish Date: Viking
Source: Library

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart."

My Two Cents:

If you like quirky characters with real depth, you'll enjoy "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine." Titular character Eleanor lives a very quiet life filled with routine. After surviving a pretty terrible childhood, Eleanor is seemingly content with a life lived the same way day in and day out. She finally has a chance to break out of her shell after she becomes friends of sorts with Raymond, her co-worker. Together, they help Sammy, an old man, and through this experience, Eleanor realizes that there is something more out there.

Eleanor is the kind of character you fall for. Not because she is warm and fuzzy (she's most definitely not), but because you want to reach out to her. The glimpses that we get of her childhood with her terribly vindictive and controlling mother and the relationship that Eleanor has with her in the present day are really something to read. It is no wonder that Eleanor is the way that she is and why she finds navigating the world so difficult. She's the kind of character that stays with you long after you've closed the book.

Even with Eleanor's difficult problems, this book still has a rather hopeful feel to it. Humans are terribly resilient and can overcome even the most difficult of circumstances. It takes others to open her up but she works so hard to address her own issues and self-doubts and ends up quite inspiring. This was a great story!