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Loading... Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (original 2018; edition 2017)by Gail Honeyman (Author)
Work InformationEleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2018)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I don't have the words yet to articulate how much I adored this book. I didn't want it to end! ( ) I’d give this book a 3.5. Eleanor Oliphant is endearing. You ended up loving her as a character and her development and healing. I didn’t go in knowing it was quite such a heavy story. Was a bit slow, but worth the read, for the two main characters. Would not reread and I didn't love the weird thing with her mom being dead but her still having phone conversations with here. Eleanor Oliphant is an endearing and funny character, rich of nuances, perfectly tridimensional. Her first-person account of life with trauma and mental health issues is so believable that one can really walk in her - most uncomfortable - shoes and understand something important about human nature, loneliness and even the mechanisms that push a person to the edge. This is the main reason why the novel narrowly escaped my "Brain Chewingum" shelf. Don't get me wrong, I immensely enjoyed the novel, its humour and its levity. Maybe, though, there is a bit too much of the levity for the conclusion to ring authentic. All characters end up being generous, helpful, or at least nice enough to stop bullying Eleanor as soon as she changes haircut and shoes. The boss is understanding, the family of the old man that she and her new friend help is compact in their gratitude and acceptance, her friend Raymond is himself a paragon of patience. Honestly, it is all a bit too much strawberries and cream for the terrible topics of neglect, childhood abuse, loneliness, alcohol abuse, and heavy mental health problems that the novel depicts so well, drily and without melodrama. That's why that fourth star remains in my pockets. This said, when I think about it, I do have people like Raymond and the other loving, sweet characters in my life, and I am most grateful for it. I also see how Gail Honeyman (what an apt and lovely name!) wanted to depict the dire cinsequences of loneliness and isolation, and the healing quality of connections. Just, she did it with a bit of a heavy hand, and this ended up forcing the plot towards a scarcely believable happy ending, given the premises. I wish life were that easy to mend. Anyway, she is good enough at writing likeable characters to make me happy that they ended up in a good place, no matter how much disbelief I had to suspend to make it happen. Thanks the Muse, she avoided going either full-fledged chick lit romance nor cheap thriller. For that, I am very grateful. Oh. My. God. (Eleanor would be so disappointed in my use of punctuation here.) This book was amazing. Increasingly heartfelt and hilarious and heartbreaking all at once. The characters were so well written that you fell in love with them. Eleanor is so eloquent and quirky and funny and sad and captivating. I'm so so sad this book had to end.
The human need for connection, initially scorned by Eleanor, is this heart-rending novel’s central theme. Eleanor Oliphant is most definitely not completely fine, but she is one of the most unusual and thought-provoking heroines of recent contemporary fiction. From pop-star crushes to meals for one, the life of an outsider is vividly captured in this joyful debut, discovered through a writing competition and sold for huge sums worldwide...And what a joy it is. The central character of Eleanor feels instantly and insistently real...This is a narrative full of quiet warmth and deep and unspoken sadness. It makes you want to throw a party and invite everyone you know and give them a hug, even that person at work everyone thinks is a bit weird. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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