Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

This book caught my heart from the first page. I read it in a rush while slightly out of breath.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was how easy it was to read and become a part of Eleanor’s life. I felt that I was getting this unique access into a life very different than mine, and I could get into her brain, into her stream of thoughts and her experiences. Eleanor’s solitude is so dramatic and constant that I felt it like some kind of blow. But the talented author, Gail Honeyman, writes all this truth without putting too much pity on Eleanor. I felt that this was one of the gifts of this book – an honest portrayal of a lonely life minus the automatic pity. Of course, as the story unfolds we learn so much more – how Eleanor came to be the way she is (don’t worry! No spoilers on my watch!) and we grow to feel for Eleanor deeply, but in a different, more empathetic way.

One of the by-products of being lonely in the world is not to have the experience of others around you. The average person experiences a lot by himself, yet also enrichens his understanding of the world around him by stories of the people close to him – we hear so many stories of experiences and perspectives of our family members, our friends, our colleagues, etc. This widens our own personal experience of the world. Perhaps you didn’t bungee-jump, but you have a friend who did, and she can share what it takes, where can it be done, what the process is, how terrifying her experience was, how exhilarating, etc.  Some of the most funny and entertaining parts of the book are when Eleanor is clueless about some experience or other and she decides to try it for the first time without any preliminary information. Of course, the people serving her do not know that this is her first time and that she is clueless and this makes the whole event even more significant. However, when you stop to think about the deeper implications of this kind of life, you understand the tragedy of it and the additional prices of loneliness.

Shortly after reading the book I read an interview with Gail Honeyman, the author. She said that one of the themes she wanted to write about was loneliness and its prevalence in our modern world.

Quotes from the book:

“These days, loneliness is the new cancer–-a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.” 

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.” 

“A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who’s wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I think that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It’s not as though I’m expecting a reply. I’m fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.” 

“When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life.” 

I do not want to give the impression that this is a depressing book, because I salute Eleanor. I am truly in awe of her strength and her resilience. She went through so much, but most of the time she is holding on, despite of everything. I also really connected to the concept of the one person who can bring a true change in another’s life. Raymond enters Eleanor’s life so naturally, so naively, and I found this very touching. He doesn’t necessarily do any grand gestures, he just sees her and this develops slowly into a friendship, something so special and not to be taken for granted for Eleanor.

Go read the book, you won’t regret it.