Paperback
Published April 27, 2018 by HarperCollins.
Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive – but not how to live. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.
I didn't know what to expect of this book. I just thought that the main character was misanthropic. But then, I realized that Eleanor was probably on the spectrum and had suffered terrible abuse in her childhood. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Raymond, the IT guy who comes to fix her computer. What does she think of him ? "A word sprang to mind: porcine".
this title popped up 2 or 3 times in the space of a few days so thought I'd check it out. given its contents, I'm unsure if it was in connection to The Maid, with its on-the-spectrum narrator, or Seek You, with it's theme of loneliness. both could apply to Eleanor, a socially awkward narrator that lives a sparse, lonely life. the plot is thin. in fact the 'neurodiversity' of Eleanor allows for really mundane actions to be drawn out over pages as she analyses each moment: a cheat really. the big reveal at the end the end that she was abused by her mother was also drawn out over many chapters that simply didn't need to be there. ultimately this felt like a cross between the very British Bridget Jones' Diary and a curmudgeonly trope like A Man Called Ove.
