Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine... by Gail Honeyman

Synopsis

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive – but not how to live.

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.

One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than fine?

Review

I have to be honest I was really excited about this book I’d heard nothing but good things from Booktube and Goodreads. I learnt that this is a debut novel for Honeyman and as first books go it wasn’t bad. I would be interested to see what she chooses to do next. At times I howled with laughter and at others it was very hard to turn the pages and continue. I can’t say it was particularly lacking anything because I can honestly say that I had no idea what the overall intentions of the story were. It seemed to me that this was an escapism novel, with no real purpose or moral to it, just a way to pass the time. Which in itself is not a bad thing, I think I just was expecting a little more from it. Eleanor as a character and protagonist was intriguing though, I could relate on several levels. When in the “getting to know you“ stage of the story I found myself questioning whether Eleanor was in fact autistic or may she have Asperger Syndrome, due to her very mundane and regimented way of life, alongside the perhaps sometimes uncontrollable need to speak her mind, most often than not at the expense of others but as you later find out she is not and does not have either condition. She does however have a past that is uncovered slowly throughout that helps to shed a light on the reasons for how she lives her life. Honeyman writes in a style that is easy reading for sure, but I found quite a lot of the time whilst reading this book that my focus could easily be pulled away making it then rather difficult to regain and continue reading. There seemed to be areas of focus that were skirted over for example, Eleanor‘s relationships, how does the way she chooses to live her life impact on what others feel about her and she them? It seemed as if the one explanation we were given was all we were ever going to get and there would be no room for expansion. In that sense I felt as if Eleanor were a little one dimensional and that hindered my experience and connection with her. It had almost a sense that she were an unfinished character. In my opinion there could have been a great deal more exploration into who she was and “what makes her tick“ meaning the reader could develop their interpretations of her more easily.

Overall this was in no way a bad book, just in my case a little disappointing after hearing such positive reports on it. This book ended up being somewhere in the middle of neither good nor bad for me. A very medial experience.

**Disclaimer** I in no way wish to alter or sway anyone else’s view by anything discussed in this post. these are merely my own opinion feel free to agree or disagree as you see fit.

#eleanoroliphantiscokpletelyfine #gailhoneyman #contemporaryfiction #books #bookblog #bookreview #reviews #reviewsofareadingaddict