Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

The way to a man’s heart, she said, is a homemade sausage roll, hot, flaky pastry, good quality meat.

He had the look of a gazelle or an impala, one of those boring beige animals with large, round eyes on the sides of its face. The kind of animal that always gets eaten by a leopard in the end. This was a rocky start.

Beauty, from the moment you possess it, is already slipping away, ephemeral. That must be difficult. Always having to prove that there’s more to you, wanting people to see beneath the surface, to be loved for yourself, and not your stunning body, sparkling eyes or thick, lustrous hair.

The goal, ultimately, was successful camouflage as a human woman.

But if you’re going to drink a cup of tea, why not take every care to maximize the pleasure?

Amen!

I simply fail to see how the act of legally formalizing a human relationship necessitates friends, family and coworkers upgrading the contents of their kitchen for them.

In every walk of life, I encounter people with underdeveloped social skills with alarming frequency. Why is it that client-facing jobs hold such allure for misanthropes? It’s a conundrum.

Human mating rituals are unbelievably tedious to observe. At least in the animal kingdom you are occasionally treated to a flash of bright feathers or a display of spectacular violence. Hair flicking and play fights don’t quite cut the mustard.

zetabetical

It was showing that program where people take old things to be valued and then, if it turns out they are worth something, pretend they like them too much to sell them.

However, I elected to keep my counsel on the matter. Sometimes, when you tried to help with suggestions, it could lead to misunderstandings, not all of them entirely pleasant.

Was this how it worked, then, successful social integration? Was it really that simple? Wear some lipstick, go to the hairdressers and alternate the clothes you wear? Someone ought to write a book, or at least an explanatory pamphlet, and pass this information on.

A woman who knew her own mind and scorned the conventions of polite society. We were going to get along just fine.

and yet there it was, still, lurking in darkness. It was time to let in a little light.