Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

By Gail Honeyman

Very funny, wonderful story

Here is a heroine who is lonely and totally self-absorbed…and you love her. Her lack of self-awareness is so stark that she is very funny, making observations without filters on office banter, bikini waxes, you name it. She creates a tipping point in her life when she falls in love with a stranger—believing he’s the “one”—and begins to prepare for the moment they’ll meet and live happily ever after. Along the way she’s irritated to find a guy hanging around, Raymond, who accepts her with all of her idiosyncrasies without judgment. His kindness and encouragement for her to be kind gradually nudges her out of loneliness and starts to reveal darkness in her past that originated her funny, tragic point of view on life.

At first glance, Eleanor Oliphant could be an antiheroine, but she most definitely is not. This is a book of kindness, warmth and about an individual who gains the courage to understand a past she’d hidden and so find herself. Honeyman has written a beautiful debut novel.