Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
By Gail Honeyman
Publication Year: 2017
Type: Fiction
Genre: contemporary
Read on 2018-05-20
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2018 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★★
This book is a masterpiece on writing first-person narrative - a meticulously crafted meditation on universal matters of love and humanity through a singularly complex and unreliable narrator.
Eleanor Oliphant is an intensely flawed, excruciatingly fleshed out character. At first she comes off - at worst - despicable and - at best - a punchline. And yet, as I read on, I could not help but root for her. The organic unfolding of events and revelations of character traits and histories is masterfully written. I was hooked early on by Eleanor’s hilariously misguided pursuit of her Macguffen love interest, but then I was truly gripped as the book descends (ascends?) into a reverse crime thriller in which the question is not whodunit but rather - what the hell happened to this woman to make her this way? and for Christ’s sake can we get her some help??
Honeyman’s world is vividly true to life from its most beautiful to its most heinous, in which actions have consequences and characters - even the “good ones” - have flaws. Honeyman’s ability to present these complexities - our complexities, as people - is a marvel. Moreover, the tempo of the book strikes a perfect balance between slowburn and satisfying resolution. Every morsel of information about Eleanor and her past is given at precisely the moment the story demands it, serving to neither alienate the reader nor lag behind their deductions.
In this book, I found a bit of everything. It was charming and delightfully witty, packed with quotable and razor-sharp one-liners from Eleanor (who in spite of her oddness truly cuts right to the quick), but in equal measures devastating and unrelenting in its exploration of horror and tragedy. It read like a slice-of-life situation comedy (with relatable content about office politics, modern dating, and cats) layered on top of a no-bars-held deep-dive into the worst in both humanity and the human experience alike. Honeyman’s ability to seemlessly modulate between the two is a testament to her profound talent and sensitivity as a writer.
I think part of what endeared me so much to Eleanor is how much I could relate to her self-imposed and yet nonetheless devastating loneliness. To that end, the most wonderful thing about this book is how it taps into the subjective experience, which in our embodied realities is oftentimes so difficult to express, and yet - as we see with Eleanor, still always one universally shared.
