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Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Contemporary fiction

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Gail Honeyman, on your first book!

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by Gail Honeyman

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Quick take

"This is a warm account of one woman’s fight to let go of old hurts and insecurities and make room for self-acceptance and friends."

Synopsis

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.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes . . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart.

Free sample

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

When people ask me what I do&emdash;taxi drivers, hairdressers&emdash;I tell them I work in an office. In almost nine years, no one's ever asked me what kind of office, or what sort of job I do there. I can't decide whether that's because I fit perfectly with their idea of what an office worker looks like, or whether people hear the phrase work in an office and automatically fill in the blanks themselves&emdash;lady doing photocopying, man tapping at a keyboard. I'm not complaining. I'm delighted that I don't have to get into the fascinating intricacies of accounts receivable with them. When I first started working here, whenever anyone asked, I told them that I worked for a graphic design company, but then they assumed I was a creative type. It became bit boring to see their faces blank over when I explained that it was back office stuff, that I didn't get to use the fine-tipped pens and the fancy software.

I'm nearly thirty years old now and I've been working here since I was 21. Bob, the owner, took me on not long after the office opened. I supposed he felt sorry for me. I had a degree in Classics and no work experience to speak of, and I turned up for the interview with a black eye, a couple of missing teeth and a broken arm. Maybe he sensed, back then, that I would never aspire to anything more than a poorly paid office job, that I would be content to stay with the company and save him the bother of ever having to recruit a replacement. Perhaps he could also tell that I'd never need to take time off to go on honeymoon, or request maternity leave. I don't know.

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Why I love it

Ever meet one of those people who, for no clear reason, treats you like you’re not worth the time of day? I often wonder what their reason is for acting like that. Did they wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Are they just clueless about how conversations work? Or could it be that their life experiences give them reason to be guarded, to be wary of giving other people even the tiniest of ins?

Eleanor Oliphant falls—mostly—into the latter category. Thirty years old, she’s a mid-level accountant whose life runs along several well-worn, if lonely, tracks: dinners for one, weekly calls with her spritely, acid-tongued "Mummy," and, most of all, taking pains to avoid humanity. Sure, she doesn’t have friends, but in general, Eleanor is doing okay. In fact, she’s "completely fine." Um, yeah, no.

Though I was instantly won over by her cheerful narration, it wasn’t long before I began to suspect that Eleanor is not as fine as she pretends. Her plan to marry a local rock star in order to impress Mummy is just weird. Her weekend vodka-drinking seems excessive. And while her inability to get along with co-workers is definitely due to a lack of social graces (you’ll LOL at a few unwitting moments of rudeness), it also comes from her steadfast refusal to connect. When she’s forced to rescue an old man who’s collapsed outside the office, we realize that while Eleanor possesses the ability to let love in, heartbreakingly, she’s got some reason not to.

To be clear, this isn’t a mystery about Eleanor’s dark past, although gradually, the truth of her frightful upbringing is revealed. This is a warm account of one woman’s fight to let go of old hurts and insecurities and make room for self-acceptance and friends. If it sounds like a corny premise, trust me when I say this girl’s got grit. She’s a survivor, she’s witty, and, against all odds, she’s got a fair bit of unextinguishable pride. She’s Eleanor Oliphant. I can’t wait for you to meet her.

Member ratings (17,339)

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Contemporary fiction
View all
The Last Love Note
What Does It Feel Like?
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
The Wedding People
Honey
The Leftover Woman
The Same Bright Stars
Bye, Baby
Definitely Better Now
Swan Song
The Days I Loved You Most
The Connellys of County Down
Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life
Jackpot Summer
Adelaide
I Might Be in Trouble
The Collected Regrets of Clover
Again and Again
Evil Eye
Black Cake
Maame
Romantic Comedy
Someone Else’s Shoes
Once There Were Wolves
We Are the Brennans
The Bad Muslim Discount
What Comes After
Olga Dies Dreaming
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Monster in the Middle
Nine Perfect Strangers
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes
Honey Girl
In Every Mirror She's Black
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Sankofa
The Unsinkable Greta James
The Love of My Life
The Five-Star Weekend
A Home for the Holidays
The Wishing Game
Behold the Dreamers
The Mothers
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Little Fires Everywhere
The Music Shop
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
The Reckless Oath We Made
When We Were Vikings
The Girl with the Louding Voice
A Good Neighborhood
Big Summer
All Adults Here
Happy & You Know It
Friends and Strangers
The Comeback
True Story
The Last Story of Mina Lee
Troubles in Paradise
White Ivy
This Close to Okay
The Chicken Sisters
The Prophets
In a Book Club Far Away
The Other Black Girl
Apples Never Fall
A Quiet Life
We Are the Light
The Most Likely Club
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
The Hotel Nantucket