Hi, Nerdies!
Here’s another novel to read: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, a realistic fiction by Gail Honeyman.
Storyline
It’s a story about a girl who thinks she is completely fine when she is completely not!
Her name is Eleanor Oliphant and she is an atypical girl with a complicated scar on her face.
Everything about her is either unusual or downright strange. She doesn’t have a mobile phone or know what facebook is. And despite her young age, she can’t stand anything part of pop-culture, especially those in-style typed abbreviations! She does speak and write over-formally as she doesn’t even know how to make or have a standard conversation with another human being. And on top of all that, she is also this oddball who thinks of stalking people as merely visiting them, and of liking a stranger as the same as having that very stranger as a boyfriend.
It’s either because of her peculiarity that she has nobody in her life, or the fact that she has nobody in her life makes her bizarre.
Anyhow, she has no friend, no family, basically nobody to talk to. Not that she has anything to talk about. Because never once she thinks that she needs somebody else, or that there’s anything wrong with her life or herself really.
Only through a random IT guy who later becomes an acquaintance who goes by the name of Raymond, Eleanor eventually finds out that she’s been missing out a lot in life. All along, she’s been missing things as basic as having a friend and things as elusive as a scar that she’s been refusing to deal with.
So.
I enjoyed this book so much!
Especially the characters.
To begin with, I adored all and every El’s peculiarities. I found them so striking that they’re intriguing, and sometimes they’re even amusing! I loved seeing her behaving insanely oddly while thinking that the others were the ones who’re incomprehensible. It was so twisted and exhilarating.
Other than that, I also found Ray and his absurd connection with our pitiful main weirdo so fascinating.
Nothing is normal about their relationship that it’s impossible to even put a name to it. It’s something like a friendship, yet it’s hard to call something friendship when one person in it doesn’t even know what a friendship looks like, let alone know how to act like a friend. But anyway the two end up spending time together thanks to a series of unplanned life events and Ray’s casualness combined. And in span of their times together they do usual stuff friends do; like going to another friend’s house, coming to a bar and having lunch, but somehow those episodes go quite differently in El’s mind.
I swear the never-ending twist-slash-contradiction between the world in and outside El’s thoughts is seriously addictive!
Writing-style
Gail’s writing-style is dramatic, solemnly atmospheric, and meticulous. This novel is not titanic-tragic, nor armageddon-dramatic, but it has just enough drama and secrets to engage readers in and out. If it were a dish, I’d say this book was very well-seasoned!
The story runs not exactly slowly but it’s not a fast-pacing narrative either. It’s more like being magnetized slow. The solemn vibes will give you the sense of right time and ambiance to devour the story properly.
Narrator
If you’re on Scribd, I’ll say you better listen to this book’s audio version. It has the best narrator I’ve listened to! The kind of narrator that totally turned me back into a preschooler by listening to her narration!
That’s it about Eleanor and Ray and see you guys next week!
