Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

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

I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.

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.