Date Published: May 9, 2017

Format: Print

Source: Library

Date Read: September 6-9, 2019

Blurb

No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

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.

_______________________________________________________________________

Review:

This was going along fine and then that ending made me want to throw the book against the wall. I HATE last minute, last page plot twists, and this one is especially sucked because it made me feel I had wasted my time reading this book.

Eleanor Oliophant had a traumatic childhood, one that the reader gets glimpses of over the course of the story. As the book opens, Eleanor is an almost thirty year old account receiveable office drone living a very regimented and lonely life in Glasgow (Eleanor herself is a native of England, and yes this is a real divide). She does not get along with her co-workers and has no outside social life; she is visited every six months by a social worker who does the very bare minimum in keeping up with Eleanor and her health status. And then Eleanor meets THE ROCKER, which takes up the first half of the book. She doesn't actually say a word to the musician, but he becomes her whole life - Eminiem's "Stan" has more chill than Eleanor. Eleanor decides on making herself over - cue movie montage of getting her nails and hair done at a salon, an embarrassing visit to the waxer, etc. At the same time, she befriends another worker at her company, Raymond.

Then her world falls apart when she realizes THE ROCKER and her will never suit, will never meet, will never be the UBER COUPLE she built up in her mind. Luckily, Raymond is there to help her after she tries to drink herself to death (along with trying pills and drain cleaner). Raymond convinces her to seek help. Along the way Raymond helps her also figure out what happened that night.

I really liked Raymond and Eleanor. Eleanor, as an outsider, had some amazing observations on society and how "normal" people go about acting socially. This is a quiet book, full of slice of life of a childhood abuse survivor as she becomes a real thriving adult and not just a survivor. With that said, that one plot twist just irked me to the point that I took a star off. 

I have been kinda quiet lately, but things are slowly starting to level out here at Chez Tea. We are still unpacking/sorting/putting away or putting up stuff from our moves - yes plural, as some stuff wasn't unpacked in the five years we were in the UK - and garage sales are in our future. But life is good here in Kansas, with the leaves changing colors and the temperatures not as blistering hot (still warm for our UK-acclimated bodies though). 

I'm still all about Halloween Bingo - two of the three books I want to get to this week is from my bingo reading list. On Saturday, Connections in Death became available on OverDrive from my holds list and I'm thinking of putting myself on Vendetta in Death's wait list now so I may be able to read in time for this year's bingo. I'm reading that on the Kindle; on the NOOK I have started One Haunted Evening anthology and so far so good. 

IRL book club pick, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, is almost done (I'm hoping to finish it tonight) and it's....fine. Easy read but nothing earth shattering, so I hope the discussions at this month's meeting generates something interesting from us reading it.

So it's been a busy week at my house, trying to unpack the last of the move boxes and just life in general. I have been re-admitted to my grad program and I'm registered for my first two classes (starting September 23rd) and all my VA 9/11 GI Bill paperwork has been transferred over to pay for the classes. I joined my base library's adult book club (As the Page Turns) on Monday and the club host (librarian in charge of programs) had our first two books set - September's read is Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and October's is Lab Girl (also the book that all of Kansas is reading in that month for the Big Library Read). After those months, we voted on what to read the rest of the year (our year runs September through May, as the librarian/host is also head of the Summer Reading Program). 

But the thing with being so busy is that I am too tired at the end of the day to read. I just spend a little while with a coloring app on my phone before I am out like a light...which is why I didn't take advantage of the head start MM gave us this week. But starting tomorrow I will take at least 20 minutes out per day to read for Halloween Bingo and IRL book club. I am starting HB with One Haunted Evening (3 short stories) for the Free Space. However, there probably won't be much review writing from me and updates may be infrequent.

Task 2:  Make an offer of peace (letter, gift, whatever) to a book character who has particularly annoyed you this year. 

I wasn't sure I'd be able to do this one because unless prompted about specific characters or even books, I have a terrible time with recall.  But as I was perusing my shelves to see if any covers triggered a response I came across Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman  and suddenly I was in the game again.

So, here it goes:

Dear Eleanor,

I'm sure it's no secret to you that you annoyed me from cover to cover; I certainly didn't keep my mutterings to myself, nor did I curb their volume.  In spite of my lack of patience with you and your inconsistencies (while proclaiming all the while that you are a utterly consistent person), and in spite of your profoundly naive and delusional view of life in the face of an urban childhood, I did admire your ability to (eventually) pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and calmly face what needed to be done.  Once you let go of your denial and delusions, you didn't muck about, you didn't cling, you didn't regress.  I admired your perseverance in the face of extraordinary circumstances.  I sincerely hope your life outside the pages of this book are blessed and you have a long, steady, healthy (dry) life ahead of you.    

Sincerely, me.