Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman
I had heard great things about this book. It's won awards, it's had great reviews, people I know have read it and recommended it. A high bar had been set, and I'm pleased to say it absolutely lived up to it. This book was quite something.
First of all, it was near impossible to put down! I began to wonder if I was actually magnetically attached to it; even when I was standing on the other side of the room it seemed to be tugging me back, and once it was in my hands there was no hope. I finished it in two days, which is quick even by my standards...
Eleanor Oliphant is an extremely interesting character. That's one of the first things that struck me reading this book. In chapter one she runs us through the timetable of her existence - everything she does is part of a planned routine. She goes to work (a 9-5 office job, of which she has never missed a day), eats her meal deal, goes home, drinks two bottles of vodka at the weekend. And repeat. Socialising never comes into it (though she talks to her mother on a weekly basis), and Eleanor is content to function on her own (as the title puts it: completely fine).
So it's evident straightaway that Eleanor is a bit of an oddball. And it's not just her strange and solitary routine that makes her a bit eccentric either, it's the way she interacts with other people. Honeyman has given her the most fantastic distinctive voice - Eleanor's speech is very proper and very formal, and it comes across as quite blunt, matter-of-fact and a bit emotionless in comparison to everyone else's dialogue, which is done very naturally. (I have to say the speech was really well-written all the way through; writing believable naturalistic dialogue is actually no mean feat, and the individual voices Honeyman weaved for her characters were top notch.) And the funny thing is, Eleanor thinks she's behaving perfectly normally and acceptably, and that everyone else is a bit weird.
And it was funny. All the way through it was funny. Her interactions with the doctor, the shop assistant, the pizza delivery man, her work colleagues, were hilariously uncomfortable. Her social ineptitude was amusing in a Bridget Jones kind of way.
But Honeyman was very clever in the way she drip-fed Eleanor's back story. The truth about why Eleanor is the way she is was not at all obvious from the beginning, but Honeyman showed us glimpses, flashes, clues, of memories deeply buried and thoughts locked away. These things that we learn about Eleanor's experiences are far from funny; they are sad and painful and shocking. And it's through this that we really start to care about Eleanor. My feelings about her character at the very beginning of the book varied from mild resentment to bemused confusion, but it didn't take long for these to be subsumed by a deep affection. I seriously cared about her, and that's why the book was so powerful.
The narrative traces Eleanor's journey out of the shadows, a very challenging but very rewarding journey of emotional recovery, facilitated by a few small acts of kindness from her new colleague Raymond. And I found that Eleanor's recovery mattered to me. Her bravery moved me. Her new-found friendships touched me. And I commend the way Honeyman managed to balance this heartstring-tugging story and all its dark details, with such humour and happiness. It was an effortless meld of the very extremes of humanity, the saddest abuse and the purest kindness. Very powerful literature.
So overall, I liked it. It was a story about loneliness and kindness, trauma and recovery, alienation and acceptance. It managed to be both very moving and very funny, and it was so clever. Highly recommend.