Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Read by Cathleen McCarron
Published May 2017 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
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.


My Thoughts: 
Everyone was reading this book in 2017. Because everyone was reading this book in 2017, I had that reaction that has so often saved me from reading a book I would rather not have read. I put it on the tbr list where books so often go to die. But everyone is still reading this book - I had to wait 16 weeks to get the audiobook from my library. If everyone is still reading this book, maybe there's something to it.

There is.

Did I not actually read any of the reviews of this book back in 2017? Because I was certain, for two years, that this must be one of the sweet, feel-good books that might be just the right book at certain times but lacks the depth that makes it anything more than a sherbet kind of read.

I was wrong.

Well, I was and I wasn't. It is a sweet, feel-good book. But there is a depth to it that completely took me by surprise. In many ways Eleanor reminded me of Don Tillman (Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project). Eleanor is a woman set in her ways, socially awkward, judgmental, and often rude. But Eleanor has a history that explains much about why she is so bad at social interaction and seems to feel she is superior to others. As Honeyman slowly revels Eleanor's past, she sucks readers in in much the same way as does a mystery book. I needed to know what happened to Eleanor and I needed to know that she was going to be ok. As unlikable as Eleanor is in the beginning, there is a person inside who desperately wants to be loved. Honeyman is masterful at getting readers to love Eleanor.

I was sad for this book to end but Honeyman ended it exactly the way it should be ended. This one is going on my book club's list for 2020 - I wish I could have them read it sooner!