Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine book review

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Published by Viking - Pamela Dorman Books on May 9, 2017
Pages: 327
Goodreads

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.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, 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.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine was a book that I have been meaning to read for a very long time and I finally got round to it. If you had asked me to review this book when I was still 100 pages in I think it would have been a very different review. I wasn’t sure on the characters and I think Eleanor’s narration style really jarred with me as a reader and I wasn’t sure I would be able to get past it. However, by the end I was completely blown away by it, when I finally put this book down I was at a loss as to what I should do with my life. It had such an impact on me as a person, and I still don’t know what I’m going to do moving forward, it might have to be a reread.

The main character is obviously Eleanor Oliphant who’s someone who struggles with social interactions and this is extremely obvious in the way she interacts with the other characters within the book. I found her voice a little difficult to get into when I started reading the story but by the end, I felt as though she was one of my closest friends, I was so ingrained in her life and story and I just wanted to have come to my house for a cup of tea. The other characters that are worth a mention are Raymond and Sammy who are the catalysts within Eleanor’s life and I loved them just as much, this book has such deep and rich characters that you can’t help but fall in love with them as much as you do. It was such a lovely experience to learn more about these characters and share the ups and downs of their lives in turn.

I think it would seem like a cop out if I said the best of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine was the whole book. But I genuinely don’t know if I could narrow the book down to just best bits because I loved it so much. Maybe the way that Eleanor introduces characters in the book and the descriptions she gives about the various places and situations she finds herself in. I loved it, when I picked it up to read it felt like a warm cozy place to come back to. This book does deal with darker themes but I just can’t explain the feeling this book gave me.

There is nothing. Okay, maybe Eleanor’s voice at the beginning, but no nothing major.

YES YES YES! Go out and read this book right now! I loved the ending and I just want to read more about Eleanor Oliphant and her adventures as she tries to navigate everything going on about her. I love her and her story.

Have you ever had a book blow you away? Which one was it? I would love to know! Let me know in the comments!