Mini review: 'Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine' was a really enjoyable read. Well, enjoying is always a funny word when it comes to hard books. The first half was plain old enjoyable, but with that knowledge of a very nasty undercurrent. When everything comes out it's visceral in pain and sheer boldness. And a twist I didn't see coming. It's a brave debut novel. I'll be looking out for more on Gail Honeyman.

A wonderful book, heartwarming. Full of witty prose with a current of tragedy. I really enjoyed it. I think there's a bit of Eleanor in all of us. I especially loved her witty observations of modern life. At points I was chuckling to myself, at others I was moved. A great debut.

An absolute gem of a story! I loved this book so much I devoured it in a couple of days. The character of Eleanor is quirky and lacking in social skills due to her traumatic childhood but I could not help but love her and laugh silently at her observations and interactions with other people. I loved seeing her friendship blossom with Raymond and watch her character develop throughout the story. I can't really say much more without giving away too much information.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher Harper Collins in exchange for an honest review.

Eleanor is a loner, she doesn't fit in, anywhere. As her life takes an unexpected turn ( she has a friend!) it leads us into her past, and future. A well told story, an evolving character. It at times saddens and amuses. A good read.

Not sure about this one. Don't think it was my cup of tea....sorry.

A rather unusual book with a different type of character, one whom I found rather fascinating and wanted to know more about. You begin to realise that she has had a difficult past but it takes patience to find out how this has effected Eleanor. Keep going with this book, you may well be surprised how much you want Ms Oliphant to succeed!

A big thank you to Gail Honeyman, Harpercollins, and Netgalley for this free copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

3.5 stars

Eleanor Oliphant is socially awkward and isolated from all personal contact. Except for interaction at the workplace she may go all day without speaking to anyone. Her phone never rings, well, except Wednesday evenings, but she'd rather not accept those calls.

And then a new IT tech is hired. And he ingratiated himself info her life. But she's still hilariously socially backward and oh so cynical. What we slowly learn about Eleanor explains why she is so protective of her privacy. And it breaks your heart.

Honeyman does a masterful job of portraying the despondency of loneliness as well as the dysfunction of abuse, not to mention the exultation of recovery. Kudos, Honeyman! I look forward to future writings.,

Absolutely fantastic!! My initial thoughts about the dialogue were pretty mixed, its written from the subjects perspective which was a little strange at times but gave the book a brilliant feeling. You really get into the psychology of Eleanor and understand her feelings towards herself and the world and how/why her character has developed. The ending felt a little rushed but the conclusion is superb, the story ended perfectly, although I would have liked to have had a little more in her romantic life for a better finale.

Wow!The most wonderful book I have read all year. Eleanor oliphant is a hero who battles her demons and wins. I laughed and cried my way through her momentous journey.
Eleanor oliphant you are shiny!

Eleanor Oliphant has a really good name. And with this really good name comes a really good story. Eleanor is awkward and lonely and I think a lot of people can relate to her, even if you don't display the extreminity of her symptoms. She is a good person, who has gotten into a rut, because it's better to feel fine than to feel something else. Eleanor Oliphant is a great character. She is strong, she is brave, she's a little quirky. One of my favourite things about Eleanor Oliphant was her comment on man sized tissues, this resonated true to me, and it's such a tiny thing, but this is what I mean that on some level everyone can relate.

I was convinced that I knew where this story was going, and whilst I had got part of it right, I didn't get all of it right and that was nice, and it was a surprise.

This was a really lovely book and I am so glad that I got the chance to read it.

A simply brilliant read. The story draws you in so fast it quickly becomes unputdownable. M. Eleanor Oliphant is a very different kind of heroine, one who at first you maintain a careful distance from. Definitely 'odd', . Eleanor's relationship with the world in which she is forced to operate is at best strained. Her inability to socialise, to appreciate the nuances of society and of human behaviour and her apparent disdain for the people she comes into daily contact with is the result of severe childhood trauma, and as her story is told and we learn more of her history she becomes a heroine we can truly root for.

The writing is superb: graceful; eloquent; heart-rendingly beautiful on occasion. It is a true skill to be able to draw the reader in so comprehensively that you feel you really know - and understand - every single character. While you cry for Eleanor's tragedy, you cheer for her personal strength and determination. Perhaps it's because we see what Eleanor doesn't on so many occasions it makes us more aware, more vigilant and better able to recognise what she doesn't - that the life she so disdains is a comfortable and happy one for so many of those who live it.

Don;t get me wrong. This is not a tragic tale of human misery and woe; it's very funny, wonderfully uplifting and sits in your heart long after you turn the final page.

I'm not often fond of books with a message, they can be laboured and didactic. Here though, without realising it we are taught not to judge, and that kindness is the greatest force on earth.

A five star read I definitely recommend.

I think we have all been Eleanor in some form or another in our lives and maybe that is why this book struck such a chord with me.. A quiet, unassuming woman, who works in an office and likes routine, and is socially awkward. She can't understand the small talk that her co-workers share, and often finds herself the butt of their jokes. But she has always had this around her and seemingly ignores it, carrying on with her daily routine that keeps her safe - or just hidden from reality and all that entails..

But then her safe routine is slightly changed when she meets a co-worker and they find an elderly man collapsed in the street. Eleanor is quick to judge his predicament, but as they visit him in hospital as he recovers, she finds herself a little shocked that her judgement is so off and actually begins to enjoy social interaction and the fact that a good deed had made so many others happy.

As she begins to gain more confidence in hanging out with Raymond, her co-worker, she finds that she actually begins to enjoy life. Although she still has an unhealthy obsession with a musician she sees on stage and begins to imagine the perfect life they'd have if they ever met. For someone so socially awkward she begins a make-over process, and embraces the online world - it makes investigating the object of your desire so much easier! - and she finds that people are nicer to her. Maybe Eleanor isn't all those awful things her mummy tells her she is every Wednesday on the phone.....

This book is cleverly broken down into 3 parts - Good Days, Bad Days, Better Days - and really delves into Eleanors' life as she learns more about herself and those 'bad days' that she seemed to have blocked from her memory and that the social workers tread very carefully around. With the help of her friend Raymond and an understanding therapist she begins to feel more confident, and you really feel for her and understand why she lives the way she does to protect herself.

I found myself shedding a tear or 3 as I became so attached to Eleanor and as her past was revealed. It really brought home how we are all quick to judge people on how they look or on the way that they behave, and how many try and change who they are just to 'fit in' but the only way to find real happiness is to be yourself - no matter how weird you may be!

This was a touching, often fun,often heartbreaking debut and one i'd highly recommend to all.

Absolutely loved this! Kept me staring into my kindle from start to finish. Am now missing Miss Oliphant and would love to know how she is getting on!

Totally brilliant. It is impossible not to engage with Eleanor and all her quirks and fancies. Her cutting asides about other people are a delight. The gradual changes to her life are catalogued with a wry wit.
One of those books that stays with you.
I loved it

Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the story of Eleanor, a completely self-contained accounts receivable clerk, working for an advertising agency, who eats exactly the same thing every day, talks to her mother on the telephone every single Wednesday, drinks exactly two bottles of vodka every weekend, and who clearly has something terrible in her past. Honeyman doesn’t make the reader imply this; Eleanor gets a visit from her social worker early on in the novel. She’s unable to interact with her coworkers and just cannot understand why they do the things they do, or how they act the way they do. She’s ‘completely fine’ in the way that you are completely fine when you are dying inside but someone has asked how you are and the answer is ‘fine thanks, you?’.

When she needs IT help at work she meets Raymond, who she quickly assesses as badly groomed and badly dressed – but he isn’t put off by either her awkwardness or the scarring on her face, treating her as he would every other co-worker. They both end up becoming involved in the life, and family, of an old man who they help when he collapses on the street. This makes Eleanor move out of her comfortable un-changing routine and into the world in small ways.

Eventually Eleanor’s life starts to crack and her coping mechanisms fail. Raymond convinces her that she should see a therapist (and the section where she does is a masterpiece of sceptical reactions to therapy) and the underpinnings of her life start to crumble as she remembers her childhood. There’s light at the end of the tunnel for Eleanor, but it’s not an easy journey there.

Overall I really liked the book, but I did have a couple of quibbles. Eleanor might be uninterested in the world, but no one who solves as many cryptic crosswords as she does would be unfamiliar with some of the cultural references she is thrown by – SpongeBob SquarePants I can buy, but not YMCA or the Grinch.

Eleanor Oliphant is 30 years old, lives in Glasgow, works on accounts at a graphic designer, wears the same practical clothes every day, eats the same food and spends her weekend drinking vodka and doing the crosswords. Eleanor has no friends and no social life – beyond her weekly conversation with her mother. It’s existing, but it’s not really living.

Initially it has a feel of The Rosie Project. Comedy drawn from the lack of social awareness of someone with an undiagnosed psychological disorder somewhere close to Asperger’s Syndrome. But it soon becomes clear that Eleanor’s problems are borne of childhood trauma rather than underdeveloped emotional awareness. Whilst Eleanor is gauche, she is not completely socially stunted; she has self-awareness and the capacity to learn. And learn she does. This is essentially a Bildungsroman – a coming of age story – but with an abnormally late developer. There is genuine comedy gold in the process – particularly as Eleanor finds reasons to alter her image.

At times, in honesty, Eleanor’s apparent ignorance of modern culture and appliances stretches credulity, but it is easy to go along with the conceit for the sake of the humour. Yet at its heart, there are real people like Eleanor. Even in Glasgow, a city with a rough and ready reputation, there are a few delicate flowers who wince at the sound of swearing, who maintain prim and proper manners to the point of prissiness, and profess never to have stepped into a pub. There are people in every city whose lives fall into lonely ruts as a way of avoiding difficult decisions and facing up to the need for personal development.

As the novel unfolds, more detail of Eleanor’s past emerges at the same time as she takes more responsibility for facing up to – and improving – her situation. The reader becomes increasingly sympathetic towards her and wills her to beat her demons.

This is not a novel that relies on tricks and although there is a twist at the end, it doesn’t define the novel. What really makes the story special is the narrative voice. Eleanor is defiant even at her most desperate. She does not look to others to solve her problems and doesn’t even really want to admit to having problems. Many people are in a worse situation than her, she reasons. Even as she does emerge from her isolation, it is not to address a particular problem; rather it is a strategy to achieve a particular goal. She can be self-depricating, but never whiney.

Eleanor Oliphant is a really fantastic book that affirms all that is good about modern Scottish society; it is an optimistic book that will stay with me.

Eleanor Oliphant is one of the best fictional characters I've ever got to know. There's a huge range of human emotion wrapped up in this book, with an amazing multilayered protagonist and some great supporting characters. I couldn't put this book down, and it is a cliché, but I laughed, cried, squirmed, squiggled, hid, attempted to ignore, suffered and grew with Eleanor. Great book.

I mostly very much enjoyed this book. Eleanor is a kind of endearing character in that she functions, but doesn't actually really live her life, and doesn't even really know what she's missing. Her naivete and obliviousness is by turns endearing and infuriating, and journeying with her as she discovers what it really means to live is a really very heart-wrenching journey of discovery.

Eleanor has lived a very sheltered life, being brought up in care from the age of 10 and working in the same job as an office worker since she was 21. Now 30, Eleanor's life begins to change as she meets the man of her dreams, and as she begins to expand her life and social circle through her interaction with her colleague Raymond and a stranger they happen to meet.

I really liked being on Eleanor's journey with her as she realised that the life she was living wasn't all that it could be, and she started to unfurl from the pressured, tightly strung, compressed individual she was to blossom into a more rounded person. Part of her journey of discovery was highly entertaining, as she misinterpreted social norms and blundered her way through the most banal of social interactions.

But at the same time, her absolute obliviousness to not only social norms but also cultural context and awareness was occasionally infuriating, as with her mental framing of, for example, her experience at a Bobbi Brown counter, and her remarks on a manicure.

Generally, though, I was very touched by this heart-rending story of a child who suffered terribly and buried it all as she struggled her way through to adulthood without the guidance of a continuous nurturing presence in her life. Parts of the story were genuinely touching, as Eleanor delved into her past and began to embrace her future. I also very much appreciated the fact that her journey was not a linear progression, but showed the struggle and back-and-forth of any sort of personal development. Unfolding the stained and murky pages of Eleanor's past with her felt like a journey of self-discovery that was by turns horrifying, bewildering, and infuriating, but always an odd kind of charming. I'll definitely look out for more from Gail Honeyman - if her debut is this good, I can't wait to see what comes next.

An absolute delight .... I could not put this book down
A loveable charter in Oliphant that will stay with me for a long time.
Her quirky ways and how she battles with relationships of any kind due to her past keep you turning
the pages
Highly recommended a pleasure to read!!!

What an amazing read this was. I was totally drawn into this as soon as I started, mainly due to the type of person Eleanor Oliphant is.

Eleanor has no social graces, she doesn't know how to interact with other people at all, and she has absolutely no filter whatsoever. She says it how she sees it, and no more. It's obvious as you read this book that she has a terrible past. Something has happened to her which has turned her into the person she is today. What that is can only be guessed at for most of the book. When the author finally reveals everything it will shock you. For a character to go through what Eleanor has, and come out all but intact at the other end, is quite something.

Eleanor reminds me very much of a computer, or Mr Spock from Star Trek. She talks about the world, and life, with extreme logic. She can't understand the quirks some people have because, to her, it isn't normal. She misses the point so much when others are trying to have a conversation with her because she simply can't make it fit in her mind. But that is what endeared her character to me.

A brilliant debut novel from an author whose career I will definitely be following in the future. Huge thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing a copy.