Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: Reese's Book Club (A Novel)

Loved this story from page one to the end.Eleanor Oliphant is perfectly fine indeed, and this book is a heartfelt dive into the life of a woman who's childhood plays a significant role in the awkward, unfiltered person she's become, with a wonderful splash of hum that I didn't see coming. I enjoy stories where the characters are flawed, yet relatable. Even the smallest things Eleanor discovers are some things I would never know--a Hollywood bikini wax? I never would have known what it was had I not read this book. Yet, those things she has no idea about make for a fully rounded, albeit backward character who is so much fun to watch grow and come out of her shell.My vocabulary increased as well, plus I learned a bit about British slang, customs, and terms that I've not heard before.I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to escape into a world where everything is not fine, and yet it is.I'm looking forward to Ms. Honeyman's sophomore work.

Eleanor Oliphant struggles with appropriate social skills. Her life is routine orientated and just plain lonely. She is blunt and judgmental—not due to a specifically diagnosed disability but more due to the outcome of a horrendous but forgotten childhood. Her life begins to spiral and with the help of a new ‘friend’ from work, she begins to recall moments of her childhood. The highlight of the novel was seeing Eleanor blossom and come to the realization of her pain. Strange as it seems, I appreciate how slowly the story of Eleanor’s past unfolded interjecting details in bits. I will remember this story in its entirety and Eleanor in particular. This was a powerful, uplifting and often humorous book.

This book reminds me a bit of one of my all time favorites - Britt Marie was Here. In that book, the character is so very unlikable, it's hard to even read the first part of the book. Think Ove (or Americanized for the film; Otto) and then some... but after a while, we catch on and she softens up to the point we root for her. I love books that remind us never to assume about another person.This book is a little less quirky and a lot more heartbreaking. It's also very believable. Take it from me, having a rough time with one's mother leaves scars. I really like the surprise information at the end of the book - I wasn't expecting that. I LOVED this book and found it very very special.

Don’t know how to say it but I loved this book . Was very different and captivating.The characters are so different , Eleanor actually not only made me smile but laugh out loud .I hope you choice this to read you won’t be disappointed.

I questioned what was happening. Then the character came alive and I was caught! I cold not stop reading.

Gail Honeyman’s charming, quirky, and resilient Eleanor Oliphant might just be one of my favorite characters I’ve met in a long time. Eleanor’s transformation from the woman she was in the beginning to the stronger, improved version of herself in the end was incredibly sad to read but also uplifting and inspiring at the same time.“I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.”Eleanor Oliphant is painfully socially inept and completely not attuned to social decencies, an outcome of her horrendous childhood. She spends her weekdays working in the finance department of a graphic design company and avoiding her judgmental co-workers and her weekends drinking the liter or two of vodka she purchases from her local convenience store. Her life is regimented, structured, and very, very boring. The monotony of her life interrupted when she and the new IT guy, Raymond, help an elderly man who passed out on the sidewalk after work. These chain of events and a little bit of fate take Eleanor on an emotional journey she wasn’t planning on taking but one she has needed for a very long time.“My phone doesn’t ring often–it makes me jump when it does–and it’s usually people asking if I’ve been missold Payment Protection Insurance. I whisper I know where you live to them, and hang up the phone very, very gentle.When I started this book, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Eleanor. She is blunt and judgmental. What comes out of her mouth is often unintentionally funny because she is just so emotionally and socially stunted. I laughed out loud quite a bit even though Eleanor wasn’t making jokes. Like, the time she went to get a bikini wax and the esthetician asked her if she wanted a Tiffani, Brazilian, or a Hollywood wax. Eleanor said, “Holly would, and so would Eleanor.” There is a naïveté and innocence to her character that is completely endearing and charming, though there were moments Honeyman was asking the reader to suspend disbelief a little too far. When I finished the novel, I realized that I came to love Eleanor along the way, all the crooked and unique parts of her character.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.This book reminded me so much of an off-the-wall indie movie, complete with quirky characters and a great friendship storyline. I reach a point about a third of the way where I just loved where Honeyman was taking the story.The cast of characters in this novel was what made it that much more enjoyable. We meet Raymond, the new guy at work, who Eleanor describes as an unattractive overweight man who smokes and walks on the balls of his feet. What he lacks in conventional beauty, he makes up for in heart. He’s such a good guy who loves his mom and over time, comes to really care about Eleanor. Sammy, the older gentleman Eleanor and Raymond help, is vivacious, sprite, and so great!“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 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.”But the highlight of the novel was seeing Eleanor blossom and start to deal with her own pain. Despite the title, Eleanor Oliphant wasn’t completely fine but she will be. Uplifting and hopeful, this novel is one I will come back to, just so I can spend time with Eleanor just a little bit longer.Audiobook Comments:After reading this book, I picked it right back up again on audiobook. The audiobook is really great and I really loved the narrator’s Eleanor. Her dry, deadpan delivery was absolutely perfect! Highly recommended!* Thanks to the Penguin First Reads program and Penguin Random House Audio for providing me a review copy for review!

This book get high scores and I recommend it. The author writes very well and certainly deserves the praise and recognition she has received. However, I strongly fault the reviews which misrepresent it in my opinion. Would we laugh at someone struggling with a disability?

Eleanor was a very strong but also fragile character. Very likeable. She overcame her frailties in the end. Very engaging.

Haven’t had a chance to read it yet but happy it’s arrived in good condition

This is a book which addresses some significant, serious issues, and it is to be applauded for that. However, for me it didn't succeed as a novel. In saying that I mean something very specific. I read this for my book club, and had that not been the case, I very much doubt I would've finished it. I found it very difficult to engage with.I would compare it to two plays which are generally thought of as masterpieces, but which I find problematic. Anthony and Cleopatra and Death of a Salesman. Both of those seem to me to get bogged down in the misery of the characters, and lose momentum and engagement. I felt the same sort of thing reading Eleanor Oliphant. To put it another way, Kermode and Mayo in their film review radio show have a long running gag about the (now) critically acclaimed film, the Shawshank Redemption, that there is an awful lot of Shawshank before you get to the redemption. This is a redemptive book, but on the other hand ..........So, the story (unsurprisingly) is that of Eleanor Oliphant, who is an accounts clerk at a small firm. She is a withdrawn loner, seen as strange by her co-workers, and is the butt of office jokes. She lives alone and her weekends consist of television, ready meals and two bottles of vodka, seeing no-one until she returns to work on Monday. As we follow Eleanor through the detail of her daily existence we learn about the tragedy of her life. A childhood dominated by a cruel mother who seems herself to have suffered something akin to Munchausen Syndrome, a subsequent adolescence spent in care, hints of something even darker, a loss of self esteem followed by an abusive relationship in early adulthood.It is in this portrayal of abuse, loss of confidence, leading to further abuse, and eventually stultifying loneliness that the book is at its strongest. In fact in response to all she has been through, Eleanor has become deeply embittered and her consequent inability to interact with others exacerbates her loneliness. Eleanor's situation is one that it is all too convincing.In her despair, Eleanor has developed a singular filter through which she looks at the world. In that, I would place this alongside such books as Matt Haig's the Humans, the Rosie Project, or the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in its use of a disengaged voice to comment on society. Contrary to other reviews I have read, I would not, however, describe her as quirky. In a similar way,I find it very difficult to view this book as being in any way comic. Partially this is because I struggle to appreciate the comedy of embarrassment, and this frequently teeters along the edge of that. Mainly however, it is because Eleanor's worldview is that of a catastrophically damaged and consequently embittered person, and I just can't find any humour in that, it's just too painful. (Also a female friend tells me that a waxing scene is funnier than I, as a man can realise.)As the story develops, we meet Raymond, who is the only chink of light in Eleanor's existence, and also catch sight of the man she hopes will be the love of her life. Raymond is an interesting feature of the book. Much has been written about the concept of the manic pixie dream girl, particularly in film. Often criticised as inherently sexist, the manic pixie dream girl is a kooky, quirky, woman who has no inner life, no purpose within the story, other than to help the staid,buttoned up hero realise that there is more to life than order and reason. Well, Raymond is a nailed on manic pixie dream boy.The presence of Raymond highlights the other major difficulty I had with the book, the inconsistency of tone. At one level, and at its strongest, this is a book about abuse, loneliness and mental illness. It deals with those issues in what seems to be a realistic and meaningful way. But then the presence of Raymond and the way the book ends, has a much lighter tone,more akin to a fable or fairy tale. I am drawn to make a comparison with Jane Eyre. While it is both a compliment and massively unfair to compare this to one of the greatest works if literature ever written, I think it illustrates the point I am trying to make. Both are works about the redemption of a young woman who suffers an almost unimaginably difficult early life. Jane Eyre has a deeply satisfying tonal consistency. It also grips the reader from first to last. By contrast, I found the early part of this alienating, it then dived even deeper into the abyss, before final reaching redemption far too easily with too light an air.As I have written this review, I have possibly become more sympathetic to the book, so perhaps it deserves three and a half stars.

I couldn't miss Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine being raved about many times by other book bloggers since its publication and I think I remember actually being offered a paperback copy a while back which I turned down in favour of something else. I didn't quite understand what Gail Honeyman's novel was about and, wrongly as it turned out, assumed that I wouldn't enjoy such a bestseller. I am now so glad that Eleanor Oliphant was suggested for this month's Readalong as I absolutely loved the story and its characters!Eleanor Oliphant herself is a wonderful creation and someone with whom I found myself identifying rather too much for comfort. Her insularity and intransigence make her a memorable person to spend time with, however it was also deeply saddening to realise how much of her behaviour is actually a protective shell, the result of extreme childhood trauma. Through the course of the novel we learn details of what happened and also witness Eleanor gradually blossoming as she comes to terms with her past. I really appreciated the limits to this reinvention however. Eleanor becomes 'more normal' but also remains resolutely herself.I was also impressed with how well Gail Honeyman brings out humour without me ever feeling that I was being pushed to laugh at Eleanor. She is a curious person, but never a figure of fun. Instead, in seeing the world through her eyes, I felt guided to see the absurdity in everyday life around her.Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine visits some dark places and I did find myself becoming quite emotional at times. The book could certainly be triggering for some readers. It is also a beautiful depiction of friendship though and I think this aspect is what will remain with me when I think back to the novel.

I first came across this novel when I saw it prominently displayed in a local bookshop. My initial reaction, after reading the synopsis on the back, was that it wasn't my kind of book at all - so I dismissed it as a potential future read. However, after hearing and reading so many positive comments about it, I decided to purchase a copy to see for myself what all the fuss was about.So, one rainy Saturday, with nothing else on my 'to do list,' I decided to stay indoors, I got comfortable in my favourite armchair and tentatively commenced reading Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. My first impressions were that the writing style seemed to have a naivety about it and that the character of Eleanor was not exactly true to life. That said, I soon found myself falling under the spell of this author, and gradually accepted the premise and the characters she so tantalisingly lay there before me. Like others, I was hooked on this story and found the book difficult to put down. Loneliness is such a sad problem in today's world. It's a subject that the author was obviously keen to explore in this novel and she does an excellent job of getting across to the reader how difficult it is for some people to interact with others and to form and nurture friendships and relationships. There are dark, unpleasant themes also examined - but it's not all doom and gloom because a fair amount of humour is also to be had, which gives the novel a nice balance.They say that the sign of a good book is one in which a character stays with you long after you have turned that very last page. Eleanor Oliphant, you will stay with me for a long time - and, as far as I'm concerned, you are completely fine......

Eleanor is a 30-year-old who works in an office Monday through Friday 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. Rarely anyone asks what she does in the office. But in the self-narrated story, Eleanor tells us she works as a financial clerk in an IT firm. She lives alone has since she was 17 in an apartment provided by social services and furniture from the charity. She makes herself pasta every night and on Friday she buys a Tesco pizza and two bottles of vodka, not uttering a single word for two days. She talks to Mummy every Wednesday night and she is completely fine. You’d say that she might feel lonely from time to time but it’s something she doesn’t know even exists because she never had company.“Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that you don’t need anyone, you can take care of yourself.”One fine day Eleanor finds her computer is not working so she calls up the IT guy, Raymond. Raymond is not someone she can like. He doesn’t fit her definition of proper man as provided by Mummy besides she has already found a proper man. He is a musician. Eleanor develops a middle school crush on the musician leading to changes in her physical appearance. On the other hand, her interactions with Raymond increase after they save an old man on the street. A new world opens to Eleanor, one she didn’t know existed. She made choices she didn’t know were there. It is funny and sad when Eleanor describes day to day things in a new perspective. And Eleanor is hilarious. This is how she describes her mug “I purchased it in a charity shop some years ago, and it has a photograph of a moon-faced man. He is wearing a brown leather blouson. Along the top, in the strange yellow font, it says ‘Top Gear’. I don’t profess to understand this mug. It holds the perfect amount of vodka, however, thereby obviating the need for frequent refills.”But what’s the reason for Eleanor’s utter loneliness? Why doesn’t she use a phone or talk to anyone? What happened to her that she has a scar on her face? Why is Mummy so rude to her? A set of changes forces Eleanor to face her past, the one she didn’t want to remember. The past she removed from her memory.Maybe change is better than fine.My ReviewWell, Eleanor’s vocabulary is awesome, and she treats herself like royalty. Which made me think our world is what we want it to be. The way she carries herself makes it evident that it’s easy to exist, but it takes an effort to live. Her loneliness and lack of emotions touched a nerve. Raymond is such a kindred spirit. While reading I was so afraid that maybe now Raymond will walk out and leave Eleanor alone. It’s a feel-good book. Makes you believe that there are still good people out there. And once you start running for the bus the universe provides.What I didn’t like how the author doesn’t go into the detail of Eleanor’s past. But maybe it’s just me.“In the end, what matters is this: I survived.”