Writing mediocre books is completely fine
Debut novel of Gail Honeyman, and winner of the 2017 Costa First Novel Award, Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine is more or less what you would expect from its overstretched title: an undemanding, funny and not particularly solid modern fairy-tale.
The first chapters won’t fail to intrigue you, in what is a genuinely fresh take on first-person narrative. Eleanor has a normal job, and lives a life that – albeit very solitary – many can relate to. The peculiarities start to emerge as soon as you get to know her better. At first it’s just some weirdly precise sentences, then a line of thought that feels a little over-the-top. And then you realize that Eleanor isn’t just your day-to-day unreliable narrator. She is utterly crazy.
Till here, nothing wrong. But then, the story starts to complicate and blurry; partly because we certainly want to know where her madness comes from.
Unfortunately, that of the trauma buried in Eleanor’s past is a story that wiggles between obscurity and insignificance, and you most likely won’t be surprised when the gran finale is revealed, many pages too late for it to still have any interest.
But the major fault of the novel is that, after introducing a genuinely amusing and peculiar character, Eleanor is left alone to run from birthday party to funeral party; and even if many times the result is enjoyable, a certain lack of care means that her fitting whims and oddities slowly but surely slide into a mess of prosaic idiocy and, equally out of character, perfectly sane and lucid behaviour.
She is, I’ll say it again, an excellent comic character; unfortunately she never arises to be a credible person.
Roaming around Eleanor there are some really interesting supporting characters that suffer, to a lesser extent, of her same disease: they are light and fun and a shadow of humanity, that almost never materializes, surrounds them. Of all, Raymond, with his lack of self-care and that stupid way we grown men have to look at girls as if we were still in high school… is personally the most likeable guy in the book.
Am I recommending this one? If you have low-value time to spare (like a train commute, or waiting for your sister to finish her dance lesson) it may be a nice read to decompress a little. But if you get bored before too much, don’t say I didn’t warn you.