Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

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

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. Not me. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I’d fly solo. It was safer that way. Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.

sometimes you’re too quick to judge people. There are all kinds of reasons why they might not look like the kind of person you’d want to sit next to on a bus, but you can’t sum someone up in a ten-second glance.

“When you read about ‘monsters’,” I said, “household names . . . you forget they had families. They don’t just spring from nowhere. You never think about the people that are left behind to deal with the aftermath of it all.”