Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

In most professions, getting older means getting better at your job, earning respect because of your seniority and experience. If your job depends on your looks, the opposite is true – how depressing. Suffering other people’s unkindness must be difficult too; all those bitter, less attractive people, jealous and resentful of your beauty. That’s incredibly unfair of them. After all, beautiful people didn’t ask to be born that way. It’s as unfair to dislike someone because they’re attractive as it is to dislike someone because of a deformity.

I didn’t want to tell her his name quite yet – there is a power in naming things,

Time only blunts the pain of loss. It doesn’t erase it.

Obscenity is the distinguishing hallmark of a sadly limited vocabulary.

Everything was there, obvious to us both, but it all remained unsaid. Sometimes that was best.