Eleanor triumphs over loneliness

A recent item from a UK report about bestselling fiction caught my eye: "In fiction in 2018 there were crime thrillers, and then there was everything else…And 30% of 'everything else' was a single book: Eleanor Oliphant." 

Eleanor Oliphant? Who’s that? How had such a bestselling book escaped my notice?

Apparently, I am late to the game. Woefully so.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Perfectly Fineis a delightful discovery, late (to me) as it is. Eleanor was a breakout hit for Glasgow author Gail Honeyman who only started writing seriously in her 40s. On the basis of her submission of the first three chapters of the novel to a writing contest, she attracted an agent, and the rest is the stuff of literary wannabes’ fantasy. The debut novel won the Costa award for best novel, has been a best seller in many countries,  and has been optioned for a movie to be produced by Reese Witherspoon.

So who is Elanor Oliphant? And is she really perfectly fine? 

Eleanor is a 30-year-old lonely oddball who prefers working on cryptic puzzles to chatting with co-workers. When anyone (a social worker, a colleague) bothers to ask how she is, “perfectly fine” is her standard, if completely sarcastic response. 

She is, after all, employed at a job that absorbs her considerable intelligence during the work week. But on Fridays, she buys a frozen pizza and two bottles of vodka, and holes up in her apartment, not speaking to a single person until Monday morning. She has a weekly phone chat with her mother, during which she endures terrible emotional abuse. 

What else could a young woman want out of life? Well, plenty. She has the sense  that a richer life is out there. But Eleanor struggles with so many obstacles: she can’t “read” others’ expressions or comments, and she seems to lack the empathy gene. A disruptive life spent in foster care and group homes has contributed to Eleanor’s meager existence, as has a terrible childhood trauma, which remains unexplained until the last pages of the novel.

Despite all her deficits and setbacks, Eleanor pushes her way to a new and better life with the aid of a friend, a therapist, and assorted kindnesses bestowed  by—yes—strangers—but also by people she comes to believe care about her.

 In some ways, this is a transformation story, a Cinderella tale. But its tart tone and black humor keep it from being treacly. You will despair over Eleanor’s missteps, laugh at her wry observations on people and pop culture--and will cheer her as she emerges from a life of loneliness to one of purpose and connections, a life that really is “perfectly fine.”