Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine | Book Review | 2017 | Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine Book – Quiet Loneliness, Loud Humanity

Some books hit like a gust of wind—fast, sharp, disruptive. Others arrive like a whisper. Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine book belongs to the latter kind. It doesn’t jostle for your attention. It walks into your life uninvited, pulls up a chair, and sits beside you for a while. Not to talk. Just to be there. And by the end, you find yourself grateful for the company.

At first, it’s easy to dismiss Eleanor Oliphant. She’s prickly, overly formal, and disturbingly blunt. She lives alone, eats the same frozen pizza every Friday, and spends weekends speaking to no one. She mocks her colleagues in her head and brags about her vocabulary. And yet, even as you frown at her judgments, you sense there’s something else going on—something that’s been buried, carefully folded away. You’re not sure what it is yet, but you keep reading. Because Eleanor doesn’t just intrigue you. She unsettles you in the best possible way.

Ordinary on the Outside

Eleanor works as a finance clerk at a graphic design firm in Glasgow. She’s been there for nine years and hasn’t once had lunch with a coworker. She lives in government housing, wears sensible shoes, and relies on supermarket meal deals for sustenance. Her most emotionally significant relationship is a weekly phone call with her mother—a woman who is cruel, belittling, and oddly performative.

But Eleanor doesn’t see a problem with any of this. She believes she is “absolutely fine.” In fact, she’ll tell you so, often. And the more she repeats it, the more it reads like a silent scream stitched into the fabric of her day-to-day life.

What Honeyman captures with aching precision is the kind of loneliness that doesn’t always come with tears or outbursts. The kind that just exists—a shadow in the room, a weight behind your eyes. Among books about loneliness, few manage to portray it with such restraint. There are no violins in the background here, no dramatic collapses. Just a woman eating a baked potato alone, week after week, convincing herself she’s okay.

The Musician, the IT Guy, and the Slow Thaw

Eleanor’s life, in all its tidy bleakness, takes a turn when she develops an infatuation with a local musician. She spots him once at a concert, convinces herself he’s the one, and begins preparing for their inevitable romance. Out comes the wax strips, the blow-dryer, and the self-help books. Her logic is skewed, but her desperation for approval—especially from her mother—is heartbreakingly clear.

And then there’s Raymond.

Raymond is the office IT guy. He wears graphic tees and puffy trainers. He smokes, says “cool” unironically, and chews with his mouth open. He’s also one of the kindest, most patient people Eleanor has ever met.

They start talking after they help an elderly man named Sammy who collapses in the street. It’s an unremarkable moment, but something about it gently dislodges the barricades Eleanor has spent years building.

Raymond doesn’t push. He doesn’t pity. He just shows up—again and again. And over time, Eleanor begins to thaw. Tentatively. Clumsily. But she does.

What makes this dynamic special is that it’s not romantic. There’s no flirtation, no slow-burn tension. It’s just two people sitting side by side, eating lunch, sometimes in silence, and not needing anything more. As a book, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine doesn’t hinge on love—it hinges on presence. That’s what makes it stand out among so many emotional healing books that rely on grand gestures and tidy arcs.

The Past Doesn’t Stay Buried

Just as Eleanor begins to engage with the world—attending birthday parties, trying takeaway noodles, Googling how to hug someone—her past creeps back in.

The weekly phone calls with her mother grow more sinister. They leave Eleanor shaken, full of self-loathing, and oddly confused. The voice is familiar, but something doesn’t quite add up. Then the hallucinations begin.

Eventually, the illusion shatters. Eleanor spirals. She stops going to work. Stops eating. She drinks vodka like water and prepares to leave the world without telling anyone.

And this is where the book stuns you—not through melodrama, but through honesty. Eleanor doesn’t experience a grand moment of clarity. Instead, she is found, in the literal sense, by Raymond. And with his encouragement, she finally seeks therapy. That’s when the truth is laid bare: childhood abuse, a house fire, a sister lost, and a mother who never made it out of the flames.

The books about childhood trauma shelf is a heavy one—but this story refuses to let itself drown in sorrow. Honeyman isn’t interested in shocking you. She wants you to understand.

Eleanor’s Voice: Awkward, Exacting, and Oddly Beautiful

One of the most brilliant choices Honeyman makes is letting Eleanor narrate her own story. Her voice is sharp, dry, and wildly unfiltered. She calls jeans “trousers fashioned from denim” and finds casual Fridays “an unnecessary descent into chaos.” She once gifts a coworker vodka as a birthday present because “it’s what adults drink during times of celebration or crisis.”

It’s funny, yes. But more than that—it’s revealing. Eleanor has learned to understand the world through books, not people. She speaks like someone who’s studied life from the outside and is now trying, earnestly and often unsuccessfully, to step in.

The writing here never winks. There’s no irony for irony’s sake. Instead, Eleanor’s observations offer a rare and precious thing in psychological fiction books: a mind learning how to trust itself again, one misstep at a time.

Flaws, and Why They Don’t Matter

Is the novel perfect? Not quite.

The ending, for instance, wraps up faster than expected. After nearly 300 pages of slow emotional build-up, Eleanor’s breakthrough in therapy and return to work feel slightly rushed. There’s an almost fairy-tale neatness to the resolution that doesn’t quite fit with the story’s otherwise steady realism.

Raymond, too, remains something of a mystery. We see him through Eleanor’s eyes, which means we rarely see his own vulnerabilities or backstory. He serves more as a light than a fully formed character.

And yet—none of this really hurts the book. Because what Honeyman sets out to do, she does with rare empathy and control. For a debut, it’s astonishing. Not because it’s technically flawless, but because it feels like it was written by someone who knows what it’s like to sit alone on a couch on a Friday night and wonder if anyone would notice if you vanished.

Why This Book Matters

We live in a time when disconnection is common, and “I’m fine” is the default answer, even when we’re not. That’s what makes the Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine book so resonant.

It doesn’t offer easy solutions. It doesn’t romanticize mental health struggles. What it does, instead, is remind us that sometimes, the smallest gestures—a text, a sandwich, a slow walk to nowhere—can be the start of something lifesaving.

Among the many books about mental health that have flooded the shelves in recent years, this one stands out for its restraint. For its grace. For the way it whispers, “You’re not alone,” without ever saying it outright.

A Few Favorite Moments

hadn’t been expecting it to happen that night, not at all. It hit me all the harder because of that. I’m someone who likes to plan things properly, prepare in advance and be organised. This came out of nowhere; it felt like a slap in the face, a punch to the gut, a burning.

Of Course, Raymond didn’t have a car. I would guess he was in his mid-thirties, but there was something adolescent, not fully formed, about him. It was partly the way he dressed of course.

Final Thoughts