Hey, everyone! I hope y'all are having a great day and today I'm bringing you a
book review. Yes, I too forgot that I do that sometimes. Today I'm reviewing
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Surprise, surprise--it's not
YA. It is in fact an adult fiction novel about a woman named Eleanor who
lives an extremely mundane life. She wants so desperately to be normal after
a childhood traumatic event that left half of her face scarred, but when she
falls in love with a musician from afar and also when she saves the life of an
old man with the help of her fellow employee, Raymond,
her life begins to change and she starts to reconcile things that she's repressed
for so long in order for her to actually be completely fine. I actually picked
this book up when I was in Lisbon, Portugal. I was in the living room of the
hostel that I was staying at and I was waiting for dinner to be ready. And the
living room had a library, so I browsed the library and I found Eleanor Oliphant
is Completely Fine and this is a book that I'd heard good things about
before and I had it on my "to-read" list on Goodreads and so I decided to take it
out of the shelf and read it for a little bit. And during my total stay
there, I only got about 30 pages in before I had to return the book and
leave. So I got a copy when I came back to the States so that I could finish
reading it and here we are. I really thoroughly enjoyed this book.
There was a time maybe halfway into the book where I suddenly fell into this
reading groove and I could not put this book down. And it's not that the first
half of this novel wasn't enjoyable, but there was just this time where I was in
this mood, near the middle, where I did not want to be separated from the story if I
could help it. This book isn't really for everyone, I don't think. Eleanor Oliphant
is a very odd, very strange character, and I don't think that it's unlikely that
there might be readers out there who find her very off-putting by her
sentiments and the way that she speaks. The writing is very stiff, very formal.
Gail Honeyman infuses Eleanor with an extremely elaborate and formal
vocabulary. For example, Eleanor uses the word "comestibles" instead of "food" or
"micturate" instead of "urinate." Like, there are common terms that she has
swapped out for elaborate alternates and so I really learned a lot of new words
while reading this book. Eleanor is extremely socially awkward due to her
lack of human-on-human interaction and so it
does take some getting used to, to the tone and to her mindset. At first, it
might turn a reader off like it did to me because sometimes she is offensive.
But then you understand that she never really learned these sets of rules, at
least not in a social learning environment, but you do get to see her
growth as the novel goes on and once you get used to it, once you get used to her,
Eleanor is actually really funny. I want to read you a few funny passages so
that you can get a sense of the humor-- see whether whether you jive with it or
not. "In primary school, sports day was the one day of the year when the less
academically gifted students could triumph, winning prizes for jumping
fastest in a sack, or running from Point A to Point B more quickly than their
classmates. How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As
if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not
understanding how to use an apostrophe." Or there's this one: "'I thought I'd found
the perfect person for me,' he said, staring at the back of the garden. 'Didn't
work out, though.' 'Why not?' I said, although I could, in fact, think of many reasons
why someone might not want to be with Raymond." And then this last one: "During
the next free-form jigging section, I started to wonder why the band was
singing about, presumably, the Young Men's Christian Association, but then,
from my very limited exposure to popular music, people did seem to sing about
umbrellas and fire-starting and Emily Bronte novels, so, I supposed, why not a
gender- and faith-based youth organization?" Also some of her descriptions
of things are just so hilarious and I grew to love seeing the world through
Eleanor's eyes. Like there's this description of a person: "She wasn't
actually chewing gum, but her demeanor was very much that of a gum chewer."
Eleanor was just so offbeat and gradually I found that to be very funny and
endearing, but I can't guarantee that to every reader. The writing in this book is
excellent. I found the characters to be so rich and vivid. The plot might not be
the most exciting, but this book is definitely about development and
growth and that is, I think, what makes it so satisfying to read. There is a
plotline involved in the book that's kind of uncovering the mystery of what
happened to Eleanor as a child and I thought that there
were enough hints dropped throughout the novel that you can kind of piece
together what happened, but there are still some surprises left for you at the
end. Although sometimes the book does get pretty dark, I think for the most part
the story just holds so much warmth and heart. Overall, I'm so pleasantly
surprised at how much I enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. I mean, I'd
heard good things about it since it was released and like I said, I had it on my
"to-read" list on Goodreads, but I never really envisioned myself picking it up, I
guess. But I'm really glad I did. It was so worth it. It's such a bizarre and
unusual but excellent book, and it's impressive, especially considering it's
the debut novel of the author, and I'm so keen to see what else Gail Honeyman has
cooking up in the future. Now I'm going to go into a quick spoiler section for
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, so if you haven't read this book and you
don't wish to be spoiled, I'd advise leaving in 3... 2... 1...
Bye!
Okey dokey, I just want to talk about a quick couple of things, first being the
mystery of what happened to Eleanor as a child. So you quickly gather the fact
that she was in a fire and that's why she has burn scars on her face, and as
the book goes on, you learn that she doesn't have siblings now but that she
used to have a sister and you kind of piece together that her sister died in
the fire. But what still shocked me at the end was that her mother was dead the
entire time. I guess I never even considered that to be a possibility. The
phone calls were written in a way that just felt so real, you know? Because the
mother would address other people supposedly in the environment or the
institution that she was in and she'd be, like, talking to other people and she talked
about the fact that they chose to watch the same movie every week. And so
those details made it feel like it was real and it never occurred to me that
that Eleanor could be imagining these phone calls with her dead mother. The
section where Eleanor is dangerously intoxicated and on the verge of suicide
was such a dark time and it was actually really, really scary to read. I was
reading it late at night in the dark and it was honestly so much more terrifying
to me than a typical horror story would be. Like, I felt so relieved when Raymond
came in and rescued her. Raymond is such an angel, I loved him so much. He's an
incredible person. Which brings me to Raymond and Eleanor's relationship.
I loved how it was a beautiful platonic relationship between a man and a woman,
but then as the novel went on, I was like, "Oh, wait... is this turning romantic?" Like
Eleanor would really enjoy whenever Raymond would put a hand on her or she
would really like when he embraced her, and she would get jealous when she saw
him and Laura together. So I was like, maybe Eleanor is developing a genuine
crush on him? I'm not sure if that's the direction Gail Honeyman intended to
direct them towards beyond the end of the novel. I don't know. I love their
platonic relationship so much, but I guess I wouldn't be that mad if it
turned romantic eventually. I don't know, what are your thoughts? Do you think
Gail Honeyman was hinting that they were going to be an item later on in the
road? Are they just friends? And yeah, I think those are the only spoilery things
that I wanted to mention. I really enjoyed this book, y'all. It was really
quirky and I usually hate the word quirky--I think it's very irritating and
it always reminds me of Zooey Deschanel, whom I do not enjoy--but this book was
quirky in a heartwarming way. I'm very glad I chose to read it. If you've read
this book, please let me know your thoughts on it. I would love to hear them.
Thanks so much for watching! I hope y'all have a fantastic day, and happy
reading! Bye!
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