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Eleanor Oliphant is a girl with the perfect routine, every day, Monday to Friday she works for a company she has ALWAYS worked for. Then on a Friday, she will go to the same shop and ALWAYS buy the same two bottles of vodka, ready for the weekend. Eleanor isn’t a great lover of change, she likes her routine, and she enjoys life by herself. But one night a stranger comes into Eleanor’s life for a brief moment, and everything changes, however, will she cope?
This review has taken me some time to write as I have just been so unsure about it, ever since I finished it! I was really hoping for BIG things with this book, as I know so many of you loved it, but I just didn’t? I found it extremely slow! It wasn’t until the third part of the book until it started picking up a little and even then it just wasn’t a massive page-turner for me. – I know that this will be a very unpopular opinion to many, and it probably doesn’t help that I’ve read so many fast-paced books recently, that it just didn’t catch my attention. I found that I’d read a few pages, and then put it down for a day or two, so it felt like a real chore trying to finish it!
That being said like I mentioned, it does begin to pick up in the third part of the book, which I did quite enjoy and once I got to this part it was much easier to keep going! Rather than putting it down continuously.
I did like the way Honeyman portrays how Eleanor has really struggled for a long time, and she perhaps didn’t really realise it. Especially with her Mum, I found the ending for those two very eye-opening on how people deal with abuse, grief and just battles with their own minds… My own struggles don’t compare to how Eleanor’s are, so it was good to see how other people also deal with their problems too! Eleanor struggled with childhood trauma, alcoholism, grief, and maybe even PTSD. But she hasn’t struggled through these problems for YEARS on her own. She enjoyed the idea of being on her own on the weekends, the book eve mentions that sometimes she would go three or four days without seeing or talking to anyone. Now, this, for anyone, is extremely unhealthy, but she just felt like she had no one to talk to.
I loved the way that Raymond really became quite a big part of Eleanor’s life and helped her get back on her feet when things really went downhill. He is a good example of how a friend should be when their friend is struggling, like making sure they get the help they need!
Eleanor Oliphant wasn’t a bad book at all, it just wasn’t for me at all, but I know that so so many people LOVED it. So I would still encourage others to try and read it too if they get the chance! I know that there have been other books that have been said to be on par with this such as The Cactus by Sarah Haywood and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, both of which are on my TBR list, so I really hope to enjoy those!
Have you read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine? What were your thoughts on it?
The Bibliomaniac 