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

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Prisoner Exchange

It was while doing research for a guide book that I discovered the first exchange of prisoners in the Second World War took place in Sweden's west coast port city of Gothenburg. If you had been at the right quay on 19 October 1943, you would have seen the swastika and Union Jack flying side by side!

Looking for the exact spot where this ocurred, I asked two elderly gentlemen sitting near the waterfront if they could help me. Miraculously, one of them told me, “I was there!” He had been a small boy living in a building overlooking the quay and saw what was happening.

Gothenburg, in neutral Sweden, was decided on after much bargaining under the good offices of Switzerland, likewise a neutral country. Details were settled between the two sides at a hotel in town, with the Swedish Red Cross given responsibility for the technical arrangements.

The manageress of the hotel told me she had once spoken to a woman who worked there at the time. The staff had not been informed about what was going on and were alarmed to hear men greeting each other with the Nazi salute, thinking the city must have been occupied.

The owner of the hotel was placed in a most difficult position when the German envoy demanded that he fly the swastika together with the other flags on the building. The solution was to take down all the hotel flagpoles so that unlike at the quayside, no flags were flown at all.

In all, more than 5,000 prisoners were exchanged that day, a large majority of them on the allied side. Most were severely injured and many had been in captivity since the earliest action on the western front. The elderly gentleman I spoke to said he remembered it as clearly as though it were “yesterday” as so many of the men were in a sorry state with only one arm or leg. However, they were doubtlessly delighted to be going home.

They arrived by train and boat, the Germans coming from England in a hospital ship and a troop transport, while conferences between officers on both sides were held on board the Swedish-American Line’s ‘Drottningholm’, which in happier times eight years earlier had taken Greta Garbo (whose original name was Gustafsson) across the Atlantic, where she became one of Hollywood's leading, if enigmatic, stars.

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How do you spell...?

Who were those people who bedevilled our spelling with their ...ough's, gu...s, qu...s, silent bs or ws or ks and more. Why did they do so? And why have we silently accepted their whims and fancies?

Actually, not everyone has. Proposals for spelling reform are as old as the hills. Well, not quite, but can be traced back to a 12^th century monk and various scribes in Elizabethan England, while their successors have included a US President and any number of other statesmen writers and other prominent figures from Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt to Milton, Samuel Johnson, Dickens, Tennyson, Mark Twain, Darwin, H.G.Wells and George Bernard Shaw.

But not many people have listened to them. Theodore Roosevelt ordered the Government Printing Office to use the proposals put forward by the Simplified Spelling Board that was founded in 1906, but Congress put a stop to that. Shaw left money for a new alphabet, but members of the Simplified Spelling Society, which he supported, could not agree over the terms of his will and that too, came to nought.

The only one to have any real success since the 17^th century, when a gentleman named Howell managed to change the spelling of toune to town, for example, and logique to logic, was Noah Webster in the US. He can claim credit for most of the differences between British and American spelling, such as color for colour, and theater for theatre. But how well do they correspond to the way we pronounce the words. The vowel sound of the last syllable in those words is the most common one in the language, but no letter represents it. Shaw wanted to use an upside-down e, but you are not likely to find one on your keyboard any time soon. And by no means all of Webster's suggestions were adopted.

The trouble began with the introduction of the Roman alphabet by Christian missionaries. Prior to that, scribes used runes. The problem was that there weren't enough letters to represent all the sounds. One or two were added later, but the problem remained. After the Norman Conquest some French ways of spelling were introduced, though spelling was not consistent. The printing press helped eventually to stabilise it, but was initially part of the problem. Many of the early printers came from the Continent and brought their own ways of spelling with them, as well as making lines of equal length by adjusting the length of words! Then there were Rennaissance scholars who added a silent letter here and there to show, not always correctly, the Latin or Greek origin of a word.

A further problem is that pronunciation has changed since spelling became more stable. But should words always be spelt the way they are pronounced? Should scent, cent and sent all be spelt the same way? How about clause and claws, or pause and paws and pores and pours? And there are many more such words. Then whose pronunciation should we go by? Also, unlike many other languages, English has avoided accents and other marks over, above, or through letters, which is considered an advantage. And though there have been, and still are, many would-be reformers, they have seldom agreed among themselves.

So the k in know, the w in write, the b in doubt and so on are not under threat, spelling bees are not likely to get easier and children learning to read and write will continue to face the same problems we did. Except when they are texting, that is.

Spell-checkers are a help, but beware. They only know if a word exists. Write witches instead of switches, for example, as I once did, and they have no objection.

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Vanishing Acts

Vanishing Acts

I should have been a magician, a conjurer. Some people swear I already am because they know no one who can make things disappear so quickly, without trace. My things. Especially ones I particularly want. And in a hurry.

Now I don't think this particular skill is something you can learn from a book, a correspondence course, classroom or other people. I can only ascribe it to natural talent, something in my genes. So don't ask me how it's done. I don't know. And don't tell me it is something only acquired with age, for I have been doing this as long as I can remember. (OK, I know what you're thinking, so don't tell me my memory doesn't extend very far, for I can clearly recall being frightened by a dog – in my pram.)

What in particular have I made vanish? Answer: everything from gadgets to keys, books and documents that are urgently needed. Even my glasses (admittedly later found on my nose). Normally, it all happens without any thought or effort, but once, when I was going away for several months, I carefully locked my desk and hid the keys. To great effect, for when I got back, weeks of desperate searching passed before I could open the drawers again.

Perhaps I should follow the example of someone I once interviewed (about something quite different). He told me his office had been burgled several times and he no longer locked the door or anything else as the thieves only created more havoc in breaking everything open. He didn't exactly put up a welcome sign outside, but had learned a lesson in damage limitation. What his insurance company said the next time there was a break in he didn't mention, but I guess they would have been glad to get rid of him, although the likelihood is that he didn't bother about insurance any more either. He could at least save himself the steeply rising cost of the premiums.

To refer back to my desk, I have now succeeded in doing something worse than mislay the keys. I have lost them! I foolishly kept them loose in a pocket together with other things and must have accidentally pulled them out and dropped them when retrieving something else. Where, I do not know. So I am now faced with the choice of getting a locksmith to come and help me, at great cost, or drilling/cutting my way out of the problem – or problems, as there are drawers on either side, for which there were separate keys.

At least I now what the alternatives are. But what to do about the unconscious, unwitting vanishing acts? All suggestions welcome.

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Change the sporting rules

Imagine that there were no weight classes in boxing, weightlifting and wrestling. Who would compete? Certainly not the lighter athletes, no matter how good they may be. Not even the not-so-light. They would be events solely for heavyweights.

Unimaginable, you might say. Yet there are sporting events where that principle is not only imaginable but the rule, particularly in athletics (track and field). Take the high jump, for example. If you are not built like a beanpole, you are best advised to try something else, regardless of your talent and ability.

So here is how I would change the rules. Clear your own height and you get say ten points, with an additional point for every centimetre above that level and minus one for every centimetre below. The competitor with most points, wins.

Everyone would then be competing on equal terms. OK, if you are very heavily built you are still not likely to jump high, but there can hardly be any legislation for that, just as the very slightly built are not likely to make good shot putters or discus throwers. But those events could nevertheless be divided into weight classes, if not as many as in weightlifting, for instance.

Basketball is another sport dominated by players who tower over most of us. Why, in New Zealand, famed for its rugby team – the All Blacks, the national basketall team is known as the Tall Blacks. So what about all those who can't stretch up and dunk the ball in the basket? Yes, I know there may be one or two shorter players in a side, but a team entirely without its giants would stand little chance against the others, certainly at elite level. So I would have a seperate class for those below a certain height. And the same principle would apply to any other sport where height or weight give a decisive advantage.

Don't you agree?

Boycotts, Silhouettes and Bloomers

What has an estate manager in Ireland and an American who refused to brand his calves, in common with a French infantry inspector under Louis XIV, an ardent follower of Napoleon, a 19th century English social reformer and an inept First Lord of the Admiralty?

Answer: their names have all become common words in the English language.

Charles Cunningham Boycott was a retired captain in the British army and became an agent for the Earl of Erne’s estates in County Mayo. Following one of Ireland’s disastrous harvests, the Land League, formed to combat unfair rural rents and evictions, called for a twenty-five per cent rent reduction. That was in 1880. The League, which advocated non-violent action, urged everyone to refuse to have anything to do with those who turned down the demand. And Boycott was the first to be targeted.

Samuel A. Maverick was a US pioneer whose insistence on going his own way and refusal to brand his cattle put his surname into everyday speech.

Jean Martinet became known by drilling Louis XIV’s infantry into such an efficient force that his name has been associated with strict discipline ever since. And later, but still in France, Nicholas Chauvin’s blind patriotism and fanatical admiration of Napoleon gave us “chauvinist” and “chauvinism”.

Then there was Samuel Plimsoll, who came from Bristol in England and was a Member of Parliament from 1868 to 1880. He was instrumental in getting legislation passed that provided for compulsory inspection of ships and for a line to be painted on their hulls to show they were not overloaded.

Finally, John Montagu was such a disaster at the Admiralty that he was blamed for the shortcomings of the British navy at the time of the American Revolution. Montagu? No, we don't talk about ‘montagus’, but he was also Earl of Sandwich and an inveterate gambler. So much so that he had food put between two slices of bread so that he could eat it without having to leave the gaming table. The Sandwich Islands were named after him as well.

Of course, these people are by no means alone in having their names enter the language. Among the many others are Etienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister given to making paper cut-outs, John Batterson Stetson, an American hat maker, and Henry Shrapnel, a British army officer who filled shells with musket balls to make them more lethal. William Lynch lived in Virginia, but there’s no need to mention what he got up to. The Earl of Cardigan, another military man, led the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War but lent his name to a much more peaceful garment. And while on that subject, mention must be made of Wellington’s boots and Charles Macintosh, a chemist who invented waterproof fabrics, while Amelia Bloomer, was a nineteenth century American campaigner for women’s rights — and more comfortable clothing.

A full list would be very long indeed. But all those people lived in the past. What about the present? Which of our contemporaries are likely to be part of the language many years from now? It’s an excellent field for speculation. Any suggestions?

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The Smörgåsbord

The Smorgasbord – Sweden's Culinary Gift to the World

To start with it was just something to occupy early-comers until all the dinner guests had arrived. It grew to become an hors d’oeuvre table, before eventually becoming a full-blown lunch or dinner, and achieved renown abroad where, however, it can take on forms peculiar to the purist. So if you want to try a real Swedish smörgåsbord, there are certain things you should know.

History

Its origins go back some five hundred years. In the beginning it was a brännvin (aquavit) table, although there was some food apart from the alcohol. After becoming a popular hors d'oeuvre among the middle classes, new dishes were added in the nineteenth century. In the early railway age it was common for station restaurants to provide it, until trains had their own restaurant cars.

It remained an hors d'oeuvre, however, until much later, although during the 1912 summer Olympic Games in Stockholm there were restaurants offering it as a stand-alone meal and there were 'smorgasbord' (now without the Swedish letters ö and å) restaurants in New York in the 1920s. But it did not become internationally known on a wider scale until the 1932 World Expo, also in New York, when the restaurant in the Swedish pavilion had a well-laden, rotating “Merry-Go-Round” table.

Its status as a starter to the main meal finally disappeared for good in the early 1960s, since when, with the addition of still more dishes, it has been complete in itself.

How to eat it

Swedes are often amused at the sight of foreign visitors piling a great mixture of dishes onto their plate, something the experienced would never do. The approved practice is to follow the recommendations made by a leading Swedish chef and restaurateur more than fifty years ago. You should go to the table five times, each time taking a new plate and fresh cutlery. The first visit is for the various kinds of pickled North Sea herring, perhaps also its smaller cousin the Baltic herring, plus a boiled potato and a slice of crisp bread and cheese, consumed with a glass of aquavit.

Visit number two is for other fish dishes, particularly salmon, boiled and/or cured and boiled eel. Number three is for cold cuts of meat and salads, number four for hot dishes, which will almost certainly include Janson's Temptation (containing anchovies cooked in cream) and meatballs, and finally there are the desserts, which were the latest addition to the table.

What does it mean?

Literally, smörgåsbord means 'butter goose table', which may seem a strange name to give it, especially as it has never contained goose cooked in butter or anything else. But it derives from the time when people churned their own butter. During the process small blobs somewhat resembling the shape of a goose, would rise to the surface. Such a blob was thought ideal to spread on a slice of bread and the result is still called a smörgås, although it normally has some other topping or toppings in addition to butter, ie it is an open sandwich. And in its earlier days the smörgåsbord had that kind of character.

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