Book Reviews for Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Sometimes yous hear so much about a book earlier yous read it, you wonder if information technology can possibly live upward to expectations. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is 1 of those books – perhaps the most anticipated volume of the starting time half of 2018. And we're delighted to study, it is as good as they say: A 1-of-a-kind, extremely funny, moving and entirely satisfying read.
Eleanor Oliphant is an accounts receivable clerk at a graphic design office in Glasgow. To all appearances, her life is totally unremarkable. But Eleanor is entirely different to those around her. Her linguistic communication is oddly antiquated with an impressive vocabulary; she sports remarkable scars on her confront; she carries her wheelie-purse everywhere; and on weekends she talks to no-one, while staying at home and downing 2 bottles of cheap vodka.
She is fine. She has her job and she doesn't demand to be interested by it: 'Graphic pattern is of no interest to me,' she says. 'I'm a finance clerk. I could be issuing invoices for anything really: armaments, Rohypnol, coconuts.'
Eleanor is only merely getting by though, and one day everything changes when she and a new colleague, Raymond, witness an old man collapsing in the street and call an ambulance. Around the same time, 30-year-erstwhile Eleanor develops an obsessive teenage-style crush on a handsome and big-headed vocalizer in a ring, and she buys a mobile telephone and laptop, and takes up Twitter to follow him. These events lead to a crisis that forces Eleanor to truly examine her life.
The street incident also brings her into closer contact with ordinary people and into the world of the old man who is surrounded by a loving, mostly functional family unit. Eleanor starts to go out – get-go only to the infirmary, and then, even indulging in some modest socialising at 'public houses'.
Despite having airs and graces – around nutrient and linguistic communication and other people's sartorial choices – Eleanor is more lacking in social niceties herself, such equally the fourth dimension she gives a one-half-total bottle of vodka and a packet of cheese slices for a fortieth birthday present. Raymond helps her simply she is repulsed past him – his filthy smoking habit, his bad dress, his awful habit of talking while eating and, worst of all, his lack of verbal finesse specially when texting, using – daze horror – abbreviations such every bit 'lol' and 'c u'.
Eleanor'south disdain for others and their dismissal of her as a bit of joke is fertile ground for some keenly perceptive takes on modern club from debut writer Honeyman. Through the truly unusual character of Eleanor, Honeyman paints some deeply poignant experiences of a woman, not used to the world, attempting to navigate it. The volume leads to a surprising climax as Eleanor, with help from Raymond, finally comes to the grips with the sinister secrets from her childhood.
Mayhap what distinguishes this book over any other is the voice of Eleanor. You could turn to whatever page to find a witty 1-liner that displays her distinctive, one-of-a-kind vocalism. No wonder Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the book anybody's talking most this yr and it'southward already been optioned for a movie – by that arbiter of skillful gustatory modality in these things: Reese Witherspoon.
We tin't help wondering what Eleanor would take to say about that.
While Gail Honeyman was writing her debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, information technology was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize as a piece of work in progress and won the 2018 Costa Debut Novel Honor. It has subsequently sold to almost thirty territories worldwide, and information technology was chosen as ane of the Observer's Debuts of the Year for 2017. Honeyman was also awarded the Scottish Book Trust'southward Next Chapter Award in 2014, and has been longlisted for BBC Radio iv's Opening Lines and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.
She lives in Glasgow.
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Source: https://www.betterreading.com.au/news/its-never-too-late-for-any-of-us-a-review-of-eleanor-oliphant-is-completely-fine-by-gail-honeyman/