merryfaith
Written on Dec 29, 2020
• Winner of the Costa First Novel Award
‘Funny, touching and unpredictable’ Jojo Moyes
• No.1 Sunday Times bestseller
• Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese WitherspoonEleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive – but not how to live
Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.
Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.
One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.
Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than… fine?
‘Heartwrenching and wonderful’ Nina Stibbe
‘Deft, compassionate and moving’ Paula McLain
‘I adored it. Skilled, perceptive, Eleanor's world will feel familiar to you from the very first page. An outstanding debut!’ Joanna Cannon
- ISBN13 9780008172114
- Publish Date 18 May 2017 (first published 9 May 2017)
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc
- Imprint HarperCollins
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 400
- Language English
- URL http://harpercollins.co.uk
Reviews
MurderByDeath
Written on Sep 15, 2020
This is my RL's book club selection for August, and seeing as how I skipped the last two (one of which I genuinely forgot about), I felt obliged to give this a chance. Luckily a friend and fellow BC member loaned me her copy.
I actually DNFd it at the end of chapter 2. Put it down and actually said out loud, 'no, I'm not reading this crap'. Scenarios of possible book club meeting outcomes played through my head and my inner voice said 'you really haven't read enough to justify your ire'. So, I made myself pick it up again.
Is this a compelling story? Yes, it absolutely is. I tore through the book in one sitting yesterday. There's a lot of talent in the writing and the telling.
There were just two problems for me: 1. I just didn't like a lot of it. This is subjective, of course; the story just isn't my thing. 2. The story was fundamentally flawed because there were a number of basic inconsistencies to Eleanor's character. These inconsistencies aren't subjective and can't be explained away by story events, even though the story events are horrific enough to allow for plenty of inconsistent behaviour.
Eleanor is, from the beginning, framed as a super-rational, automaton-like woman with a very expansive vocabulary, a formality of speech that approaches legalese, a scrupulously balanced diet, and a perfectly timed, strictly adhered to routine. She hoards prescription pain meds, and goes through 2 full bottles of vodka every weekend. Fine so far in terms of consistency.
But then she meets Raymond, who smokes, and she wastes no time telling him in detail why smoking is vile and unhealthy; when he comments on her knowledge, she tells him its because she considered taking up smoking but as she always researches everything before trying anything, she discarded the idea. Now, if she researches everything, and discarded smoking because it's detrimental to health, then a personality such as Elenor's would also research alcohol and likewise refrain from systematically drinking 2 large bottles every weekend.
I understand cracks in the facade, but really, Eleanor is so rigid at the start you question whether she's on the autistic spectrum; it implies a level of personal discipline that doesn't allow for vodka flavoured cracks.
Eleanor's past is a dark and pretty horrific one (Trigger warnings for physical and emotional abuse), but she wasn't raised in isolation. In fact she's in the foster system from the age of 10, so it's stretching the bounds of incredulity when she visits a McDonalds for the first time and describes a filet o' fish sandwich as though she were an alien visitor to this planet, saying it was her very first visit to a fast food establishment and how she finds fast food repellent and unhealthy. Hard to believe when you've spent 7 years in a Foster care system that you've never experienced fast food, but, ok. Where the real inconsistency lies is when she goes home and has spaghetti hoops for dinner, which I'm assuming are the British version of spaghetti-o's, a particularly vile nutritional wasteland in a can.
At one point later on, she comments on someone wearing jeans and jean jacket, saying she never knew you could turn denim in to a suit. A small thing I'd not have noticed, except I was already inclined to rack up inconsistencies. She grew up in London and she's now living in a large Scottish city and she finds someone wearing jeans and a jean jacket odd? I'd have said on any random night in any metropolitan city, a denim ensemble would be amongst the least of the outstanding sartorial choices. There's no way you walk through a major city for 7 years and find jeans and denim jacket weird.
At the end - and this is purely an outright editing error - there are two news articles dated about 6 weeks apart. The first one says something along the lines of "the victim, aged 10, cannot be named because of privacy laws" (she said it better, but I don't have the book at hand). The very next article proceeds to name her - first and last name - multiple times. Guess that underage privacy law was repealed in those 6 weeks. There's a massive plot twist (this is a HUGE spoiler - you've been warned): Sixth-sense style, which I caught early on and had confirmed halfway through when someone asked Eleanor where her mother was and she said "I don't know".
So it's a compelling story, but a very inconsistent one. A book that relies as heavily as this one does on emotional extremes deserved to have had a much more pedantic editor, as befits a pedantic character. Eleanor had a horrific childhood and is broken in more than a few places, but she lived in the world; participated in it, yet we're presented with a character who might as well be a newly arrived visitor to planet Earth. Even though I liked Eleanor, and found her funny, and agreed with her views on text-speak, I just couldn't buy into her reality. Like Eleanor, I value consistency, and this story just wasn't.
Your mileage may vary.
tylerrosereads
Written on Mar 16, 2020
Wow. Just Wow.
what an amazing example of an unreliable narrator.
My heart just ached through a lot of this. At first I was really unsure if I would keep reading this book. Eleanor is a lot to take in. But the more I read the more she grew on me. And that ending tho...
This book is extremely well written. I highly recommend. The author is set to have another book come out this year and I will be eagerly awaiting it!
If you liked this book you might also like Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley and Faithful by Alice Hoffman, be prepared to cry.
liz089
Written on Oct 23, 2019
Loved it as an audiobook, great narrator !!
mrs_mander_reads
Written on Jul 8, 2019
Bianca
Written on Jun 27, 2019
18. A book you meant to read in 2018
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.
— Funny, charming, and heartbreaking. Eleanor Oliphant is so damn relatable, and I am definitely not fine! 😭
abookishblether
Written on Jan 10, 2019
The book is set in Scotland, and it really felt like it was written by someone who had either spent a lot of time here or was Scottish. This is the first time I've read accurate Scottish speech on the page and I felt so seen. The audio book is also top notch in terms of accents.
At the beginning of the story, Eleanor is absolutely, determinedly F-I-N-E with her life, her complete lack of friends and the limited contact she has with others. Eleanor's story pulls no punches, and we get an intimate look into her life as she begins to branch out and connect with the people she works with.
clementine
Written on Aug 3, 2018
This is a very funny book with a lot of heart. Eleanor's voice is hilarious, and her subtle character development is very well-done. I love the recurring joke of Eleanor complaining about people's poor social skills even though she's the one who is behaving atypically. The supporting characters are also great - and the friendliness and warmth of the people Eleanor encounters is totally in line with my experience of Glaswegians. (Scots have a reputation for being a bit gruff, but I lived in Glasgow for about a year and a half and they are genuinely SO nice.)
That said, this book did fall slightly short for me. First, I think it takes a bit of suspension of disbelief to accept that a thirty-year-old woman in the year 2017 did not have a computer or cell phone. I'm not saying Eleanor should be an Instagram thot or whatever, but if she had a landline and television why would she not have other forms of technology that by this point are SO integrated into our social lives? And while the novel explains her excessively formal way of speaking, it seems a little unbelievable that she still speaks the way her mother taught her to as a small child after literally twenty years interacting with normal people and consuming media. Finally, I put all the pieces together regarding her childhood, MINUS the twist which was then bizarrely not explored at all? It was just like, "Oh, the mother who has been calling me weekly from prison to harass me actually died twenty years ago and it was in my head this whole time. I'm going to go meet my friend at the café, the end." It made the ending a bit unsatisfying.
Still a quick, enjoyable read that's not too dark and not too fluffy - I'd recommend it for sure, but I think it's definitely flawed.
ktshpd
Written on Jun 13, 2018
2019 - fantastic book! Went into the first attempt with the wrong expectations, but on attempt two, I couldn't put it down.
Mercy
Written on Mar 31, 2018