Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Title: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Author: Gail Honeyman

Published: May 9, 2017

Rating: ⭑⭑⭑⭑

Trigger Warnings: Depression, suicide, substance abuse, self-harm, sexual assault

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say”

The Basics

Eleanor Oliphant, is, as it turns out, not completely fine. Not even a little bit. She is, in fact, not fine at all. 

EOICF uniquely encapsulates one woman’s mental health journey. She overcomes barriers, faces trauma head-on, and the reader watches her evolve from a creature of habit into someone unafraid and reaffirmed. 

“Sometimes you simply needed someone kind to sit with you while you dealt with things.”

This novel shares the grueling, tumultuous process of coming to terms with and conquering one’s trauma. There are many, many ways people can paint mental illness in fiction in a poor light (See my review for Supermarket). What made this story so amazing to me was not just how eloquently Honeyman breached the topic of repressed trauma, but that she also does so by way of such a lovable character. I love this story because Eleanor is not a weak character. She is strange, brutally honest, and hilarious often without realizing it. She is steadfast in her beliefs and opinions and does not feel shame about either. She is naive in a way that prompts the reader to care for her, to want her to feel okay. Eleanor’s blossoming friendship with a  coworker also makes for the perfect character parking. In some ways I actually felt very similar to Eleanor’s new acquaintance Raymond; I felt on several occasions that he was acting and reacting the way I did when reading their interactions. 

“Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are.”

There were so many individual things that I felt were well-done in this novel. It felt like a story in several acts; that is, there were storylines and conflicts that persisted through the novel, but also smaller sub-plots that arose and resolved as well. Sort of like side-quests.

I appreciated that romance is not the main thematic takeaway here. Too often important stories are muddled by the prospect of a romantic partner “saving” a character from their mental health struggles, which to me is harmful and also unrealistic. 

Eleanor is, also, of course, a type of unreliable narrator, but not in a way that makes you feel tricked. She is at once grown-up, mature, while also carrying many child-like mannerisms and thoughts, as is characteristic of trauma survivors. Eleanor is in the process of unearthing painful repressed memories, and by putting this story in the first-person inside of an omniscient view, we are experiencing only what Eleanor is experiencing at any given time. We are on the journey of healing her trauma with her. 

 To sum up…

This book is not just a lovable heroine highlight, it is also a meditation on trauma and its responses well into adult life. Eleanor makes us examine the way we feel about loneliness: are we comfortable being alone, or are we just used to it? It seems impossible to know the loneliness that Eleanor has known her entire life, but we all have a version of this feeling. When you start to examine Eleanor’s behaviors as trauma responses instead of personality quirks, so much of what she does makes so much sense. 

I think this is a story about a lot of things, but it is most importantly a story about Eleanor. A character who could be anyone, who is trying to figure herself out, to make changes where everything has been the same for years. A character who is trying to be if not completely, but closer to, fine. Eleanor shows us that sometimes, no matter who we are, we all need a little bit of help.