Reviewed by clementine on
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.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 3 August, 2018: Finished reading
- 3 August, 2018: Reviewed