Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

Eyelids are really just flesh curtains. Your eyes are always ‘on’, always looking; when you close them, you’re watching the thin, veined skin of your inner eyelid rather than staring out at the world.

There are scars on my heart, just as thick, as disfiguring as those on my face. I know they’re there. I hope some undamaged tissue remains, a patch through which love can come in and flow out. I hope.

‘Life is all about taking decisive action, darling. Whatever you want to do, do it – whatever you want to take, grab it. Whatever you want to bring to an end, END IT. And live with the consequences.’

Strength conquers weakness – that’s a simple fact of life, isn’t it?’

Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that there’s something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don’t need anyone, you can take care of yourself.

I find lateness exceptionally rude; it’s so disrespectful, implying unambiguously that you consider yourself and your own time to be so much more valuable than the other person’s.

I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to continue to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it might seem, the possibility of change.

However much you loved someone, it wasn’t always enough. Love alone couldn’t keep them safe …

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

But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I’d worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don’t find very funny, do things they don’t particularly want to, with people whose company they don’t particularly enjoy.

Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.

It’s both good and bad, how humans can learn to tolerate pretty much anything, if they have to.

These days, loneliness is the new cancer – a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.

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.

I was getting to quite like my own voice, my own thoughts. I wanted more of them. They made me feel good, calm even. They made me feel like me.

‘In the end, what matters is this: I survived.’