Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman’s debut novel, is a joy because, even though she’s an oddball, there’s something about 30-year-old Eleanor that makes you relate to her and instantly like her. Honey­man’s writing style is witty and it’s a delight to get to know Eleanor through her narration as she comes alive in the pages. No wonder while Honeyman was writing Eleanor Oli­phant is Completely Fine, it was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize as a work in progress. It later won the 2018 Costa Debut Novel Award.

 

In the book, you will meet Elea­nor, a clerk at a graphic design office, whose existence is orderly even though completely devoid of good relationships. She works all week long and on Friday nights buys herself two bottles of cheap vodka to last her the weekend and eats pizza for dinner and doesn’t speak to anybody till Monday comes around. All this is fine with her. Her job doesn’t remotely interest her but that doesn’t matter so long it pays the bills. Her existence is unre­markable. But Eleanor also feels there’s nothing remarkable about her either, especially not when you factor in the scars that make up more than half her face.

 

Then Eleanor develops an obsessive teenage-style crush on a handsome and arrogant singer of a band, and she finally buys herself a mobile phone and laptop, and even opens an account on Twitter to follow and keep track of his where­abouts. She also feels the need to kind of reinvent herself if she is to grab his attention.

 

Also, one day, she and her col­league, Raymond, witness an old man collapse in the street. They help him and in the process Elea­nor, unwittingly, ends up forging ties with him and his entire fam­ily. There’s also the matter of her disturbing relationship with her mother whose only contact with Eleanor seems to be through once-a-week phone calls. It is all these interconnected events, and seem­ingly harmless situations, that force Eleanor to reexamine her life.

 

Eleanor’s experiences as a woman not used to the world yet attempting to navigate it are poignant. They teach you a thing or two about the need to understand yourself bet­ter and come to terms with your faults and cracks, and to move on. Eleanor’s voice is sharp and it cuts through the hogwash that we, as human beings, are capable of tell­ing ourselves in order to overlook our weaknesses. She will, at times, feel like a much-needed inner voice reminding you that you can turn your life around by making the right choices, no matter how difficult those choices might be.