Eleanor Oliphant - a book club choice

When travelling abroad I still like to keep up with what the Stockholm Bookworms are reading and send them my thoughts on the current book, usually together with some of the comments I have found online from other readers. This is what I had to say about Eleanor Oliphant is Perfectly Fine by Gail Honeyman. But a word of warning. It does reveal details of the story.

The question I asked my self repeatedly while reading the book was, “How plausible is Eleanor?” Extreme loneliness is undoubtedly widespread, especially in the cities, and all-too-many people have lived through a horrendous childhood and cannot but be affected by it for life. But how can one reconcile Eleanor's intelligence – after all, she went to university at the age of seventeen and is a wizard at cryptic crosswords – with her extreme naivety and ignorance of the world around her. She lived with foster families when she was growing up and even if she took no part in social life at university, she must have gone to classes and lectures with other people and was subsequently aware of what her office colleagues thought and said and were up to.

Then there's her language.She speaks as though she has learned English from a Victorian textbook full of words and expressions that nobody today would use in normal speech. Who on earth would talk about 'micturation' or say 'heaven forfend'? 'Rebarbative', 'vertiginous', 'catatonic', 'mammaries' and many more words seem designed either to have readers pat themselves on the back for knowing what they mean, or rushing for their dictionaries. It is difficult to believe the families she lived with spoke like that and they most certainly didn't at the office where she had been working for eight years.

I thought the counselling with Maria worked far too easily. Eleanor had had counselling many times before, obviously without much effect. How come it worked so well and so quickly now? I also see the telephone conversions with Mummy, portrayed with never an indication that they were anything other than real and from a prison, as a gimmick allowing the author to add a little surprise at the end. And then Honeyman does heap calamities on her poor heroine. Not enough with being bruised and beaten before the final childhood disaster of the fire, plus the unhappiness of living with the foster families she was sent to, but the author then had her spending two years with a man who used her as a punchbag!

Another question is how Eleanor could remain unscathed by her vodka consumption, then suddenly give it up so easily. Her “iron constitution” would not have saved her from its consequences. Then there are all the unanswered questions about Mummy? How come she died in the fire? Had she intended to commit suicide and take the kids with her? Or did something go wrong and she got caught up in the flames while Eleanor, in some miraculous and unspecified way, managed to escape despite going back into the blaze to try to rescue her sister, who was locked in a wardrobe? Who was Marianne's father? Was Eleanor's little sister the result of another “assault”? And did Mummy really go to all the places Eleanor mentions? Or were they also figments of Eleanor's imagination? You can write your own back story.

Finally, how plausible are Raymond and Sammy and his family? Are these real people?

Having said all that, although I thought it was rather long-winded until being brought to a rather rapid and happy end, I found the book reasonably interesting and not difficult to read, apart from the micturation etc. Nevertheless, fact may be stranger than fiction, but for me this fiction was too strange to be swallowed whole.

Many of the online reviewers had no difficulty in doing so, however. When I looked, the average score on Amazon's UK site was a very generous 4.7 from some 6,000 readers, while on Amazon.com it was 4.6 from 4,000-odd people. Goodreads had no fewer than 319,400 ratings and more than 34,000 reviews, with an average score of 4.3.

“I loved this book,” writes a 5-star reader in the UK. “It made me laugh out loud and weep too.” Others also talk about Eleanor making them laugh and cry? I'm not in the habit of crying over books, but have been known to laugh out loud. Though not at this one. “I finished it a week ago,” this person continues, “and I've really missed her this week. I would recommend it to anyone.”

Other 5-star people write in much the same vein. “There is so much to Eleanor,” states one. “In the beginning, I thought that I didn’t care too much for her but as time went on and she opened up, well, I fell in love with her. … Beautifully written and just a lovely story, you will fall in love with Eleanor too.”

“Ohhh, I could not wish for a more perfect book,” is another 5-star comment.

Moving down slightly in the ratings, there was still little fault-finding. “There wasn’t a big BANG ending but I enjoyed the journey to get there as Eleanor’s character is a pleasure to get to know,” writes this 4-star reviewer. “Unlikeable at first but I warmed as the book went on as I began to understand why she behaved as she did.”

But move down to 3 stars and faults are found a-plenty. How about this? “Not my usual book choice, it's one of those “book club” books which I tend to avoid. Some witty prose, but really a bit clichè & predictable, apparently all you need to cure interminable loneliness and personal tragedy is a make over & a romantic life lesson, hmmm, seemed a bit shallow.” That writer may not be so hot on punctuation, but let that not detract from her views.

A slightly less critical 3-star verdict was: “I did come to like and sympathise with Eleanor and the other characters in the book; but I found it a bit of a fairy tale and I wasn't entirely convinced. The story of Eleanor's coming to grips with her traumatising past, and overcoming it, seemed a bit too pat and simplistic. It is well written, and I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy reading it, but it is not the type of book I would normally choose.”

At the 2-star level the criticism is not only greater, but even personal. Listen to this: “I bought this book because it was recommended by my book club and also as I used to work with the author, albeit in a different department. From memory, the author does not have a social work, counselling or care background and this shows in her book.

I, however, do have some personal experience related to the book and for this reason I was extremely disappointed upon reading it. Professionals are presented so negatively and inaccurately. … Nor is it so easy to overcome loneliness, abuse and mental health problems. The whole situation with Sammy and his family is very unrealistic - it would never happen. I met you two minutes ago, come to my party etc.

The ending was so disappointing. My book group agreed... The author has undertaken insufficient research into very serious issues and it's an insult to get this all so very wrong”

Yes, sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish 2-star readers from those entertainers who give a book the lowest score. Here's one who reads books somewhere I have never considered before. “It's Mother's Day, and my family handed me bath salts and my new book and told me to go for it. They know I'm just crazy enough to read an entire book in one bath, and I was ready to do it.” I bet the water was cold by the time she got to chapter 3 or 4.

“I prepared my bath, and I began reading, and I was (very quickly) almost in physical pain. I don't mean to be rude to the author; I know how hard it is to write a novel and get it published, but this would not have made it past my eyes, if she had handed it to me.Again, ALL APOLOGIES, but this is Mother's Day, and you have one annoyed mother on your hands. You have ruined my bath, and in doing so, you have released the Kraken!!
MUST the reader be invited in to experience every one of Eleanor's bowel movements and meals? MUST we suffer through every not-interesting-in-the-least observation on life?...According to Eleanor, she has "white contours of scar tissue that slither across my right cheek." Here's where I just about threw the book. Explain. No, seriously. Explain how scar tissue slithers across a face. Do you mean as you are speaking or making funny faces? Did you attend Hogwarts? Are you a Slytherin? Help, please! ...

I saved myself from drowning by stopping at page 50.”

Pretty difficult for the 1-star people to beat I would say, although they tried. Here are some of their comments:

“It's a long time since I have been so completely disappointed by a book, or seen such a triumph of marketing over material. Eleanor Oliphant is a perfect bore, self-opinionated, judgemental and frankly bereft of a single likeable characteristic...”

“Seriously, no one is THIS odd and able to hold down a job in a busy office plus take care of themselves alone, paying bills on time and all the rest of it. Social ineptitude of this degree would have you jobless in no time, how did she even get past an interview? Of course ,sadly, there are certainly people who cannot function in society; without family to support them, they end up on the streets, unable to cope. They tend not to be promoted to office manager!”

“We are asked to believe that an alcoholic can drink herself into complete oblivion every single weekend, but never misses a single day's work due to her alcoholism. Has the author ever met any real alcoholics?”

“Eleanor Oliphant is empatically NOT fine. In real life she would probably have been sectioned, but clearly there is nothing remotely "real" about this book which manages to trivialize both genuine loneliness, alcoholism and severe mental illness in one fell swoop!”

“I read it to the end for book club, but it left me feeling like crawling into the back of a dark closet and sitting there for a day or two. (I went outside and tried to recover with some therapeutic gardening instead).”

Gardening? Maybe, but it's reading in the bath that intrigues me most. Unfortunately, it's no longer possible for me to try as my bath tub disappeared with the “mini-upgrade” to my flat. Could try the shower, of course... Well, perhaps not.

Have a great meeting.

Stanley

https://stanleybloom.weebly.com