Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the 2017 debut novel by Gail Honeyman, and the winner of the 2017 Costa Debut Novel Award. The story centres on Eleanor Oliphant, a social misfit with a traumatic past who becomes enamoured with a singer, whom she believes she is destined to be with. The novel deals with themes of isolation and loneliness, and depicts Eleanor's transformational journey towards a fuller understanding of self and life.
Eleanor Oliphant, the novel's protagonist and narrator, lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and works as a finance clerk for a graphic design company. At the novel's outset, Eleanor is 29 years old. She is academically intelligent, with a degree in Classics and high standards of literacy. Every day on her lunch break she completes the Daily Telegraph crossword. However, Eleanor is socially awkward and leads a solitary lifestyle. She has no friends or social contacts, and every weekend consumes two bottles of vodka. She takes little interest in her appearance, having gone without a haircut since she was 13.
Not considering that she has a problem, Eleanor repeatedly describes herself as "absolutely fine", and even when obvious moments of awkwardness arise in her interactions with others, she tends to blame the other person's "underdeveloped social skills". Her colleagues regard her as a bit of a joke, and refer to her as "Wacko Jacko" or "Harry Potter"; while she regards them as "shirkers and idiots".
Clues gradually emerge to Eleanor's troubled past. She has a badly scarred face; knows nothing about her father; spent much of her childhood in foster care and children's homes; and, as a student, spent two years living with an abusive boyfriend who regularly physically assaulted her. Twice yearly she receives a routine visit from a social worker to monitor her progress. Her mother now appears to be confined to an unidentified institution: she phones Eleanor for a 15-minute conversation on Wednesday evenings. It is clear that Eleanor's mother is both vindictive and manipulative.
Several developments advance the narrative. Eleanor develops a crush on Johnnie Lomond, lead singer in a local band, having won tickets to a concert in a work raffle. She becomes convinced that he is the "love of [her] life" and "husband material". She starts to follow his Twitter feed, discovers where he lives, and visits his building. In anticipation of meeting him, she begins an unprecedented regime of personal grooming: she has a bikini wax, and later a manicure and haircut, buys new clothes, and visits a Bobbi Brown beauty store for makeup advice.
On leaving work one day with a new colleague, Raymond Gibbons, they witness an elderly man, Sammy Thom, collapse in the street. At Raymond's insistence, they call an ambulance, and help save his life. They are subsequently drawn into a series of encounters with Sammy and his grateful family, and in the process an embryonic friendship grows between Eleanor and Raymond.
Eleanor attends another long-anticipated Johnnie Lomond concert, certain that this is the moment at which they will meet, and the pieces of her life will start to fall into place. Instead, she finds that she is hidden in the crowd, and that Johnnie is unaware of her presence. When, to fill a gap in the performance, he moons the audience, she realises that he is not the refined soul-mate she had imagined. A dry ice stage effect stirs disturbing recollections of a traumatic fire in her past. She returns to her flat in despair, retreating into an intense three-day drinking binge and assembling materials for a suicide attempt – a hoard of painkillers; a bread knife; and a bottle of drain cleaner.
Eleanor is found by Raymond, sent by their boss to investigate her absence from work. He helps clean her up, puts her on the road to recovery, and continues to visit regularly over the following days. He even brings her an abandoned cat for company, which Eleanor appreciates. At Raymond's urging, she visits her GP, who refers her to a mental health counsellor. Eleanor eventually returns to work, where she is warmly greeted. Gradually, with the help of both the counsellor and Raymond, Eleanor ends her weekly contact with her mother, and her full childhood story emerges, including details that she had suppressed. When she was 10, her mother had started a house fire with the intention of killing both Eleanor and her four-year-old sister, Marianne. Although Eleanor survived, her mother and Marianne died. The weekly phone conversations with her mother have been entirely in Eleanor's imagination.
This book is an amazing depiction of alcoholism and what depression and loneliness can do to people. Never before has being alone felt so sad. The moment I put this book down, the first thing I did was call my friends and my parents to tell them how much I appreciate them because this book truly makes you realise the importance of all the connections, small and large that you form with people.
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