Isolation Can Be BAD

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

Single women, social isolation, intergenerational relations, friendship, computer technicians, Glasgow, Ireland, psychological, contemporary women, fiction.

Rating 7/10

Eleanor Oliphant is a woman with an interesting personality and ideology for life due to her past trauma involving a psychotically mentally ill mother. Eleanor has a schedule that consists of Monday through Friday working at her job. From Friday to Sunday, she drinks one bottle of vodka throughout the weekend and doing her usual routine. Eleanor is fine with this lifestyle. When unusual and unpolite behavior comes across her way, she tries to understand life through her own ways of interpretation. Raymond comes into her life and he changes her life. Raymond shows her that life should be way better than just fine. Through life changing events, Eleanor heals from past trauma and becomes herself the way she wants to be.

I did like this book in the beginning. As I saw one of my college professors reading this novel and spoke about the novel with deep interest. I personally saw Eleanor as antisocial, but I had guessed due to past traumas. Overall, this book was fine and was short but with a thick plot that should’ve and could’ve been expanded into a lengthier story. I just did not like the climax, but the ending sufficed enough. Maybe in the future I will reread this novel and give the novel another chance possibly.

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