Peace In The Margins

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the 2017 debut novel of Gail Honeyman, and the winner of the 2017 Costa Debut Novel Award.

It is a story of an odd and eccentric finance clerk in a graphic design company. Eleanor lives a life of isolation and loneliness until she meets Raymond the IT guy in a serendipitous encounter. A friendship slowly blossoms between the two giving way to an introspective look at the effects of PTSD in one’s life.

Interestingly, the diagnosis of PTSD is never mentioned in the novel, but one can certainly infer its presence. Following a horrific house fire during Eleanor’s childhood, her memories have been locked tightly behind a firewall that only a compassionate IT technician can breach.

This novel goes on my list of all-time favorites. I love Eleanor! I laughed at all of her literal observations and expectations of the world.

“She had tried to steer me towards vertiginous heels again – why are these people so incredibly keen on crippling their female customers? I began to wonder if cobblers and chiropractors had established some fiendish cartel.”

But then Honeyman would turn me upside down with her prose – I just wanted to rest in some of her phrases; I wanted to live inside the words she chose…taste them and let the flavor sit on my tongue.

“The moment hung in time like a drop of honey from a spoon, heavy, golden.”

“When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life.”

And then she sums up the entire purpose… [SPOILER ALERT – from here on]

“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.”

Eleanor turned her focus to a local rocker who didn’t even know she existed. Eleanor was in “love.” Some might say “blinded” by love for this rock star. When the reality of the situation was revealed it came delivered all too fast, and she spiraled out of control.

“I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.”

As she was drowning herself in vodka, salvation was delivered in the form of a quiet, undeterred love. Raymond the IT guy shows up, cares for her, and gets her the help she desperately needed.  Love was just what Eleanor needed.

“There are scars on my heart, just as thick, as disfiguring as those on my face. I know they’re there. I hope some undamaged tissue remains, a patch through which love can come in and flow out. I hope.”

I am so glad I picked this book up as a recommendation from Anne Bogle’s podcast What Should I Read Next. It is a story that holds your heart, makes you laugh, and captures your breath. It teaches you that outward-human aesthetics cannot reveal what is in a person’s heart, that love really does conquer all, and “In the end, what matters is this: I survived.”

Unsolicited review.

Until Next Time,

Alicia