Our Score:★★★★★★★★✩✩
GENRE: Fiction
Selected by Nic - March 2018
SYNOPSIS:
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.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
The only way to survive is to open your heart.
(Synopsis taken from Goodreads)
STORY BEHIND THE BOOK:
REVIEW: (Contains spoilers)
Gemma's Thoughts:
What an amazing book! It is not often that I completely fall in love with a book but I fell head over heals for this one. Eleanor is a quirky, unique character who is hilarious without meaning to be. Gail Honeyman captures her character beautifully and you can't help but love her. When you first meet Eleanor she is a social recluse who is very abrupt with her colleagues at work and is seen as the office 'joke'. At the weekends she goes home to her lonely flat with a bottle of vodka that she consumes over the two days. It is her odd friendship with Raymond that begins to show Eleanor that it is ok to go out, make friends and begin to start living rather than just existing. You can't help but feel sympathy for Eleanor as you slowly learn more about her relationship with her mother and realise how lonely and depressed she actually is. Thank goodness for Raymond who literally saves her life. I would love there to be a sequel and am very excited about the news that this will soon become a film! I would have to say that this is now on my very small list of favourite books. You have to read this book!
Emma's Thoughts:
Ok - so the title of this book intrigued me and I guess we all know or have known an Eleanor and at some points her behaviour and comments did make me smile... I do love a straight talker! Ultimately I did feel for her and want her to be happy. Cue Raymond who helped her to live a little. Eleanor seems to have no social skills and not much of an idea about anything... she didn't have a laptop (no internet!) or a mobile phone and the bit where she went shopping was quite heart warming. I would recommend this book and would actually quite like to see it as film.
THE SCORES:
Emma: 7
Gemma: 9
Kim: 9
Nic: 9
Pamela: 7
Sandra: 8
Average 8
Let us know what you thought about this book. We would love to read your reviews and hear what you would score it.
If you enjoyed this book why not try:
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent
Happy reading!
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