THE SUNDAY REVIEW | ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE – GAIL HONEYMAN

Brief disclaimer: I’ve been working on this review for a month now, and it’s one of the hardest I’ve written. It’s not perfect. I may come back and try to tidy it up a bit in the future. But for now, I just wanted to get something up so I can move on to the next one! Sorry if it’s a little more scattered, long or repetitive than usual.

This book has been absolutely everywhere in 2018. First it won the Costa Debut Novel Award, then it was on the Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist. Everywhere I looked, there Eleanor was. So, despite having already tried and failed to read it (twice), I decided to go back and give it another, proper go. And I made it through, though it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing.

Let me start at the beginning.

This is the story of a woman, Eleanor Oliphant, who does not fit in. She doesn’t have any friends, she spends her weekends at home with two bottles of vodka and her lunch hours eating high street sandwiches while completing crossword puzzles. She has worked in the accounting department of a graphic design company for nine years and doesn’t take holidays or sick days. She eats the same meal (pasta with pesto sauce and a salad) for dinner every night because she believes it fulfills her nutritional needs and only requires one pot and one plate. She is, in a word, boring. But despite how her life has settled, Eleanor’s past was anything but. There are hints at a deep trauma – she has as scarred face, she lives in assisted housing, she mentions her childhood in and out of group homes and foster families, and a bad relationship. We don’t find out much more than that until quite late in the book (so I won’t give anything away here), but are given just enough to imagine the pieces her story could be filled in with, and it’s not a pretty picture. And while she outwardly seems to have adapted to her quiet life, she is clearly lonely and isolated, and this isn’t creating healthy habits for her.

Things begin to change for Eleanor suddenly, and all at once. She goes to a concert (a work thing, not of her own accord) and falls hard for the lead singer of the band. Then she meets a man who works at the IT help desk in her office, and the two of them happen to be in attendance when an old man has an accident on the street, which draws them together. These events, occurring around the same time, start thawing Eleanor’s chilly demeanour, and she starts seeing the world a little differently, and herself within it.

I like the premise of this book. I enjoy stories that allow me to really get to know a character, and I like it even better when that character is flawed. Eleanor is definitely that. It deals with important themes – abuse, emotional trauma, depression, the deep impact of loneliness on overall mental health. And I like the characters that surround her. I even like how the plot unfolds, and the pacing of the story. My main problem with this book is Eleanor, and how she is portrayed. So it’s a big one.

The book is written from her perspective. She comes across as socially inept, if not suffering from some kind of antisocial personality disorder, and that creates a difficult conundrum for the writer. In order to maintain that voice, it must be written with a particular perspective and set of ideas, and those ideas must be outside of the norm. But how to then draw other, “normal” characters accurately when they’re being seen through that lens? It is an impossible task, and one that necessarily fails. Eleanor’s narrative is stiff, unyielding, judgmental and aloof. She behaves oddly to the people around her, and seems not to understand basic human interaction. So she is often doing things that make her seem strange to people she comes into contact with, and can be frustrating to the reader.

I could forgive that, if that were the only issue. But in order to create any semblance of balance, Eleanor’s character has to somehow give the reader information that, according to how her character is drawn, she shouldn’t be able to understand, much less convey. She doesn’t understand how to have a basic conversation with another person, yet picks up on the subtext and hostile undercurrent of things said about her by colleagues. She is clueless about fashion and style, yet accurately describes the appearance of other characters – and offers opinions on them that attempt to stay true to her character (like saying a particularly well-groomed woman is “shiny”), but show more awareness of style than rings true. Her house is described as being a mess (which also didn’t seem to fit with her character, since normally personalities who are as rigid and exacting as Eleanor tend to be overly controlling of their physical environments) when her social worker comes to visit, but then she turns a critical eye to her friend Raymond’s housekeeping when she is at his home, noting with surprise that it isn’t as slovenly as she had expected. She continually bungles every social interaction she has – like when she insults the manicurist by saying she could have done as good a job at home – yet she is able to navigate a funeral and a server at her local cafe telling her a sad story with finesse. This creates an inconsistency that I found it difficult to get past, on top of the off-putting main character that is already an obstacle to the reader being able to fully immerse themselves in the book. I think it was an overly ambitious decision to give Eleanor this type of difficult character and then place the entire book in her head.

Eleanor was a definite issue for me, and while the things that bugged me changed throughout the book, the fact that I was annoyed by her didn’t. To explain this I’ll have to give away a couple of hints as to things that happen in the book (no major spoilers, but skip this paragraph if you prefer to know nothing going in). As we learn more about her history, some of her oddness just doesn’t stack up to what I would have expected. I get that childhood trauma and foster care can leave an adult with attachment issues, difficulty trusting others, a need to control and potentially some negative coping strategies. But I really had a hard time matching Eleanor’s idiosyncrasies to her past. Some examples: It’s constantly pointed out that she misses pop culture references. This would make sense for someone who had been kept from the world for their entire childhood and then only just started navigating it freely, but not for someone who was in foster homes with access to television and public school from her early teens, who then went on to complete university and live alone with a job for a decade. She regularly reads newspapers, listens to the radio and watches TV. I grew up without TV myself, so I know what it’s like to be out of touch with pop culture. But even I still managed to pick up on cultural references second-hand pretty quickly. It seems a purposefully contrived detail employed to make Eleanor a social outcast. Another example is when she decided to buy a Playboy magazine for an elderly gentleman who’s in hospital because it’s marketed to men in general rather than specific interests like boating or fishing. Doesn’t she understand what pornography is? If she’s so exacting about judging people’s manners and whether they’re on time or have shaved, wouldn’t she also be offended by smut? It just doesn’t fit.

Then the way she develops as a character, while pleasing at times, also didn’t jive for me. Either she is so socially clueless that she genuinely didn’t pick up any social understanding throughout high school, university, and nine years of employment (meaning she is incapable of social understanding) or she is able to learn and change, and should have done so in the two decades preceding this book, at least in her ability to navigate mundane day-to-day life. I also have a real issue with therapy being portrayed as some kind of magical process that can resolve someone’s severe and life-long trauma in a couple of months leaving them suddenly free and healthy and, though maybe not cured, pretty close to. I find that to be a negative portrayal, particularly in a book lauded for its mental health themes, because it sets unrealistic and harmful expectations, both for those in need of help and those who are affected by someone experiencing trauma. It’s a much longer and harder road than that. I felt the author decided she wanted a severely damaged character, so she gave her this really horrifying back-story then threw in some weird behaviours and other mental health issues, and figured sure, that’ll work. But it didn’t feel well-researched, it seemed like a lazy portrayal, and it didn’t ring true to my own experiences or the experiences of other people I’ve known who have dealt with childhood trauma and/or mental health issues. It felt sloppy and inconsistent. It might not feel that way to a different reader – many have loved it. It just doesn’t seem realistic based on my own experiences, and because of that I found I was unable to suspend my disbelief and accept it as written.

Now that I’ve thrown lots of shade at this book, let’s do a 180 and talk about what I did like because, believe it or not, there are some things that worked for me.

The first is that, in spite of her writer’s hamfisted application of social awkwardness and odd personal quirks, I did really like Eleanor. I wanted her to gain agency in her life, find a way to move past some of her history, and to make some meaningful connections with other human beings. And though I didn’t always think her character development rang true, I still found some of it quite satisfying from a story-telling perspective. I also liked that it showed that it is possible, with some help and no small amount of courage, to face one’s past. That even deep trauma can begin to heal, and just because someone is struggling doesn’t mean their life is irredeemable. I also liked that it portrayed a lot of characteristics we associate with elderly characters (being stuck in comfortable but restrictive routines, being socially isolated, not being fully able to take care of themselves, being out of touch) as being equally possible in a younger character. I think we often overlook loneliness and isolation as major mental health issues, or assume they aren’t concerns for young people. But that isn’t true, particularly in the anonymity of today’s cityscapes, and this book definitely shone some light into that dark corner. I loved some of the supporting characters in the book and was really happy to spend time with them. It made me happy to see Eleanor finally getting some support and care when she had been without it for so long.

I know other people have raved about this book. It’s readily acknowledged by many reviewers that Eleanor isn’t a likable character, but that that was intentional and worked. I disagree with this assessment. I didn’t find Eleanor unlikable, I just found her inconsistent and unbelievable. I did like her. I was very much on her side, and despite the issues I had with her voice, the plotting worked to the extent that I was rooting for her, albeit from an emotional distance. So I don’t fault Eleanor. I just think the writing didn’t manage to accomplish what it was trying to do. The author made some narrative choices that created a lot of hurdles. I think it would have been much easier and more effective to structure it differently – either providing multiple voices or changing the timing of the narrative so it was a first-person story being told by an older Eleanor looking back, which would have provided a justifiable reason for her ability to portray other people with an awareness she completely lacks at the time of events. Either option would have been more effective in telling this particular story in my opinion.

That said, as I’ve mentioned, this book is not only positively reviewed by many in the online book community, but has been selected for two major literary prizes so far. If I had gone into this without the awards buzz, I would have had much more realistic expectations, and I probably would have liked it more. So if the blurb appeals to you, then I definitely think you should give it a try. Just be aware that it does have problematic elements. There is a lot to like here despite its issues. I really enjoyed Raymond, he was a warm-hearted, lovable character, and his relationship with Eleanor is one that made me feel very warm and fuzzy. I liked how Eleanor evolved as a character, and as I said, I was definitely rooting for her. I actually found myself thinking, as I was reading, that this book might do well to be adapted. If it were on film – or even a radio drama – Eleanor would be presented as a character from outside rather than inside her head, and I wonder how that would impact how her character appered. This book reminded me strongly of The Rosie Project – another book featuring a character that wasn’t realistically portrayed, but that was an enjoyable read.

I really wonder, too, how much my own reaction to the book was informed by the hype surrounding it. I had heard such wonderful things, so going into it I had pretty high expectations. I thought it was going to do something groundbreaking, that the character would turn out to be well-written, and that by the end I’d be in tears and gripping it to my bosom, unable to part with it and leave Eleanor behind. Of course I was going to be at least a little bit disappointed. So I will freely offer up that bias. I have no idea if I would have been more forgiving of its shortcomings had it not been pushed so hard. And I do see a lot of potential here, so I hope that Gail Honeyman’s next novel will live up to that potential.

I would love to hear from any of you who have read it – particularly if you read it before everyone started talking about it. How did you react to it? Do you see any of the issues with Eleanor’s character that I did? Or is it really just me?

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. All this means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit (to say the least) and a bit of a loner.

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.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of a quirky yet lonely woman whose social misunderstandings and deeply ingrained routines could be changed forever—if she can bear to confront the secrets she has avoided all her life. But if she does, she’ll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.
– Goodreads

Book Title: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Author: Gail Honeyman
Series: No
Edition: Paperback
Published By: Viking Canada
Released: May 9, 2017
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 336
Date Read: April 9-26, 2018
Rating: 6/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.34/5 (131,994 ratings)