Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, thank you very much. She doesn’t like to deviate from routine and remains in the same company, doing the same finance job for eight years. Afterwards, she goes home and waits for the next working day. Every Wednesday evening is a fifteen-minute phone call from Mummy and at the weekend she drinks two bottles of vodka. So why change a perfectly structured, safe and incredibly lonely existence?
But then two things happen. Eleanor goes to a gig where she claps eyes on the man of her dreams and her work computer contracts a virus. Both events trigger a domino effect that will change Eleanor forever.
I was on holiday and consumed this book in a single sitting. While most of the UK basked in sunshine, my microcosm of coastline was hemmed in by sea mist. So, I relaxed on a comfy sofa in a converted railway carriage and immersed myself in Eleanor Oliphant’s lonely life.
“My phone doesn’t ring often – it makes me jump when it does … I’ve not voluntarily invited another human being across the threshold. You’d think that would be impossible, wouldn’t you? It’s true though.”
Eleanor survives, she doesn’t thrive. The everyday human interactions which most of us find annoying take on special significance to our incredibly blunt but endearing protagonist.
“I do love call centres … It’s always nice to hear my first name spoken aloud by a human voice.”
Honeyman cleverly hints at a darker side to Eleanor’s past, and as the story unfolds, we build up a possible understanding as to why she’s chosen to shun human interaction. Something bad must have happened. And Mummy definitely sent a chill down my spine.
“Mummy has always told me that I am ugly, freakish, vile. She’s done so from my earliest years, even before I acquired my scars … Around average height approximately average weight. I aspire to average … Pass me over, move along please, nothing to see here.”
But her frailties build a desire in the reader to make sure she’s going to be okay. We stand in her corner, cheering on the gradual changes Eleanor undergoes. And slowly she lets others in.
“On impulse, I leaned forward and brushed my cheek (not the scarred one, the normal one) close to hers. It wasn’t a kiss or an embrace, but it was as close as I was able to come.”
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a compelling narrative about human interactions or perhaps the lack of them. It lifts the lid on loneliness in an ultra-connected world.
“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 fare into visiting a similar horror upon them.”
Loneliness surrounds us, it can consume and cripple us. I’m not going to give the plot away, but Honeyman shows us that even the most determinedly solitary individual can find friendship and hope in the unlikeliest of places. Five stars.