Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant is not completely fine at all. She is lonely, and yearning, but also surviving; it’s not until the twin shocks of becoming involved in the life of an old man she helps save and the falling in love from-afar with a musician that she begins to question her ordered, old-fashioned lifestyle.

Eleanor is the kind of woman we all hate or perhaps, less powerfully, dismiss in real life. She’s a weirdo. She is petty about money, and supremely awkward about social interactions. She is the sort of human we don’t like and don’t want to. And yet, in this narrative, she is our heroine. This is a novel that reminds us of the power of stepping inside someone else’s head, and the empathy that ensues – a novel that reminds us of the power of fiction.

Eleanor has been through some dark times, darker than most. And yet her observations about ‘normal’ life – from her bewilderment at getting a bikini wax to the nuances of eating at a fast-food restaurant – are universal, a reminder of the little weirdnesses we take for granted. She is both peculiar and familiar, a woman trapped by loneliness in this strange modern world who we can’t help but want to save.