Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman My rating: 5 of 5 stars We first meet Eleanor Oliphant and immediately realize something is off. I still maintain that there’s some undiagnosed neuro-divergence that contributes to her point of view and the way people view her. Ever so slowly we dig deeper to find out that there’s a history of trauma that also contributes to her unique behaviors and perspective. Slowly a cast of supporting characters comes along and things in Eleanor’s life start to […]

Word of mouth, including from you wonderful Cannonballers, finally got me to read this book. It was not at all what I was expecting, but I have zero regrets. Eleanor Oliphant is an odd duck. She’s worked at a low-level job for years without any ambitions of change. She lives alone, has no friends, and has a dearth of social skills, and from early on in the novel we become aware that she has a complicated history. All of her days are the same: work, […]

Of course, it was pretty much a given that the titular Eleanor Oliphant of Gail Honeyman’s debut novel would not be completely fine, since stories about completely fine, well-adjusted people do not lend themselves to compelling narratives. However, everything I knew about this book going into it (a soothingly neutral artsy cover, the review pull-quotes on Amazon, Reese Witherspoon’s folksy Southern-fried endorsement) did not prepare me for level of trauma experienced by our protagonist. Eleanor isn’t just not fine, she is grappling with massive psychological […]