Eleanor Oliphant is More Than Fine…

Wow what an emotional book- I laughed, I cried and I gave a massive sigh of relief when it all came to a head. It’s taken me a while to get my thoughts in order for this one- which often seems to be the case with excellent books 😉

I was rooting for Eleanor from page one. Honestly, she’s a strange cookie, but I wouldn’t say she’s unrealistic. There’s something very raw and real about her story: the sad state of loneliness that exists in society is a shocking reality of modern life. So I didn’t have to suspend my disbelief at all- which was surprising given how I’d seen some people saying the book was a little out there.

It was also an incredibly complex and layered book- and that completely subverted my expectations. Sure, I’d heard it was good, however I went into this assuming I was in for a fluffy contemporary- and that’s not exactly what this is- it goes a little bit deeper than that. It turned out to be character driven, literary, quirky, moving and somewhat enigmatic book. It even had some classics references (which made the classicist in me squeal with joy- they’re that good). All of these components blend into something utterly unique. I ended up having an entirely different reading experience- and that’s always a great thing.

My one niggling teeny tiny complaint was that it felt a teensy bit slow at times… though of course this can be forgiven, since it gave the characters the opportunity to properly grow. And I’m not just talking about the main character- the side characters in this are so remarkably drawn that at times they stole the show. I will admit that when I read this last month, I was in a massive slump (I wrote in my notes that someone said to me “everything shit’s when you’re in a slump”- which isn’t entirely right, as I thought this was fabulous, yet may explain why I sometimes found the pacing off)

All in all though, I found this was a wonderful book. Highly recommend it.

Rating: 4½/5 bananas

Have you read this? Do you plan to? Let me know in the comments!