Review - Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

​​by Gail Honeyman

​​Release date 5/9/2017

​​336 pages

​​4 out of 5 stars

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​​According to the publisher, “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 unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

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​​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, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she'll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.

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​​Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .”

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​​Eleanor Oliphant is a heroine unlike any I’ve ever encountered before.  She goes to work and returns home at night and on weekends to eat pizza and drink vodka. While Eleanor doesn’t have any friends or hobbies, she finds her life to be “completely fine.”  Eleanor is a creature of habit through and through, until one day an elderly man named Sammy disrupts Eleanor’s usual day and requires her to come to his rescue, along with her coworker, Raymond.

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​​While Eleanor was content with her life the way it was, the way that she lives is a total mystery to Raymond.  He lives a much more “normal” life; he has friends, he goes out to eat, he visits his mother regularly, and most importantly, he wants to be friends with Eleanor.  Though she is resistant, Raymond is eventually able to drag Eleanor out of her shell to see that life can be better than fine.

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​​This book truly has it all.  What we learn about Eleanor’s background is truly heartbreaking, but the ending of the book will have you crying happy tears.  Eleanor struggles with loneliness and fitting in, but ends up with some really beautiful relationships.  She wants nothing more than to be at home alone, but also desperately wants to have some kind of relationship in her life.  Eleanor can be both frustratingly obtuse and then in the next moment, say exactly what we are all thinking, despite how rude it may sound.  I think that most readers will see a part of themselves reflected in Eleanor, and that makes it impossible not to love her.

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​​While I loved almost everything about this book, the ending was what kept me from giving it 5 stars.  The book closed with what I personally found to be a gratuitous plot twist that left me wanting more solid content before the story ending.  Other than that, this book has one of the finest character developments I have ever seen; Eleanor is one of the few modern heroines that one would feel qualifies as a romantic hero and I greatly commend the author for creating such a unique character.

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​​If you haven’t started your 2020 reading yet, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine  is the the perfect book to kick off your year!

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