Few months ago, I was recommended to read a book with a quirky title named Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by couple of my friends. Glad that I immediately ordered the deeply moving and funny book online. Now, I’m recommending this beautiful read to everyone.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is Gail Honeyman‘s debut novel. She is the Costa Book Award’s winner and also the book of the year winner at the British Book Awards for her amazing debut novel.
The book focuses on loneliness, the new cancer as rightly said by the author. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a funny, compassionate, warm, dark, sad and thought provoking book. What an incredible debut novel!
Excerpt of the novel:
She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.
Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.
The main character Eleanor leads a simple and secluded life where she goes to her office every week and on weekends she is home drinking vodka and eating pizza. She does not have any friends and her only social life consists of a phone call with her mother every week.
Eleanor is lonely, awkward and lacking in social skills. She has been through a terrible childhood trauma with a visible scar on her face. The walls Eleanor has built around herself is about to break as she makes a friend. How will the change affect her?
I loved the book and it took me on a roller coaster emotional journey. A terrific debut that is not to be missed.
Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
“A woman who knew her own mind and scorned the conventions of polite society. We were going to get along just fine.”
“No thank you,” I said. “I don’t want to accept a drink from you, because then I would be obliged to purchase one for you in return, and I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in spending two drinks’ worth of time with you.”
“When the silence and the aloneness press down around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes if only for proof of life.”
“I took one of my hands in the other, tried to imagine what it would feel like if it was another person’s hand holding mine.”
“Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.”
“She looked at him with so much love that I had to turn away. At least I know what love looks like, I told myself. That’s something. No one had never looked at me like that, but I’d be able to recognize it if they ever did.”
megsblogged.com 