Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant, thirty years old, works in an office, does things exactly how she wants them without worrying what others think. Eleanor Oliphant is perfectly fine on her own, thank you very much, and always has been. She goes to Marks & Spencer every Friday, talks to Mummy on the phone every Wednesday night, and spends her weekends in a fog of vodka. Most other people (the “hoi polloi”) have atrocious manners or uninteresting lives so there’s simply no reason for Eleanor to engage with them more than is absolutely necessary.

Eleanor’s life begins to change though when she ends up at a local concert one night and falls for the musician on stage. Building an elaborate fantasy life, she begins to figure out how she can meet him. After all, as soon as they meet they’ll surely fall in love and live happily ever after. Right?

But Eleanor’s life is also changing due to an inadvertent friendship developing with the IT guy, Raymond. When Eleanor and Raymond help an old man who has fallen in the street, their lives become slowly more intertwined and Eleanor finds herself more and more outside of her usual comfort zone and schedule.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine draws some obvious comparisons to Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project but I found myself more often reminded of Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen. There is a much darker tone to Eleanor Oliphant than is found in The Rosie Project. It’s clear early on that Eleanor has a heavy past. We learn of the scar on her face, stories of broken arms and black eyes, and there are the weekly, disconcerting phone calls with Mummy.

More than all that though is the fact that I initially found Eleanor very dislikeable. While not outright creepy the way that Eileen is, she doesn’t have much to endear her to the reader. While Don (of The Rosie Project) is more of a charming idiot savant type, someone who mostly gets along with people but has to work very hard at it and doesn’t really understand why, Eleanor seems to actively judge and look down on others. She has little desire to engage with those around her and clearly seems to think of herself as better than them. As her interactions increase and she goes through some major personal development, this does change and Honeyman does a good job of showing how her life and childhood has affected Eleanor.

Overall, the novel is an easy and entertaining read and certainly offers an interesting perspective into the mind of a vastly unique person. Whether Eleanor is on the Autism spectrum or simply the product of her own past is left up to the reader but it is gratifying to watch Eleanor change and develop over the course of the novel. While, of course, remaining uniquely herself.