Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

When I came to Europe I thought, yeah, I am good. I am not going to buy any books.

I was wrong.

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

This was book number one. I went into Book in Bar, the cutest little mainly English bookstore in Aix-en-Provence and saw it lying on the table- but no. No, Kendra, I told myself. You are not going to let one of your first purchases in France be a book. You buy too many books already. 

So I put poor lonely Eleanor back down.

Very few days later I went back, and it was gone. Eleanor Oliphant in the EU cover, paperback edition that we did not have in the US was gone! My eyes widened to where The Lesser Bohemians took its place, searching just be to be sure it wasn't covered up by another novel. It was only after hyping myself up for a few moments, I went towards the counter.

"Bonjour."

"Bonjour," the woman at the desk responded, stopping her typing. She waited for me.

Deep breathes. I had this. "Tu parles anglais?"

At least I had enough words to hopefully switch to English. After all how was I supposed to ask if they had Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, otherwise? Tu a Eleanor Oliphant est ca va? No. I am pretty sure that is wrong on a number of levels.

She smiled and said yes to the first question. No, to the second.

"But we are ordering a new shipment. It should be in on Wednesday or Thursday if you don't mind. I can put your name down."

"Ah, ok. Oui. C'est bon." And by this I meant awesome, now I can come into Book in Bar everyday to just be around the books and annoy the staff by pleasantly asking if the book came in early. Score!

By Thursday though, right on the day they said. Eleanor was in. That evening back home instead of doing my art history homework, I set to reading.

Right away I was struck by the epigraph that begins the novel written by Olivia Laing in The Lonely City.

"...loneliness is hallmarked by an intense desire to bring the experience to a close; something which cannot be achieved by sheer willpower or by simply getting out more, but only by developing intimate connections. This is far easier said than done, especially for people whose loneliness arises from a state of loss or exile or prejudice, who have reason to fear or mistrust as well as long for the society of others.
Loneliness is accretive, extending and perpetuating itself. Once it becomes impacted, it is by no means easy to dislodge."

First of all, I rarely read epigraphs but this one was something else, completely summing up the story as well as how I was beginning to feel myself as a person alone in a new country for the next so many weeks.

As if I needed anymore incentive, I read one for hours into the night, falling into the critical yet utterly unique voice that Eleanor brings forth as she begins to step out from her self-isolation and into a new sort of social interaction she had not experienced before.

“People don’t like these facts, but I can’t help that. If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”

Along with that social interaction I can firmly say that I have not read a book like this ever before with easy frankness and a distinct narrative that does not shy away from everything Eleanor is from someone who is interesting, quirky, awkward, and completely emotional overall. She is after all, a woman who in the beginning of the novel tells you straight up that on Friday she goes home from work with a frozen margarita pizza and two bottles of vodka to make it to Monday.

Most of all I feel like in this day in age where social interaction is no longer a strict requirement, Eleanor's story is all too relatable.

By the end of this novel however, I was floored with how much I felt that I had lived through with Eleanor even though there were not a whole lot of different events taking place in the book. More like, realizations. We are show almost all the sorts of kindness and forms of love there is in the world to ultimately bring forth the idea that it is never to late to make a change in one's life for the better. A lesson that Eleanor learns and I personally think I still need to at times.

Eleanor's character definitely grew on me the more I read to definitely make this thought provoking and emotionally trying novel one of my favorites of the year, simply by the fact that I haven't stopped thinking about Eleanor, Glen the cat, Raymond, and the entire story itself since I have put it down.

T'is a rare strange novel this one.