This is one of those books where it took me a few chapters with the main character to realize I cared about her and wanted to know her story. Sometimes authors do such a great job of emphasizing a character’s flaws that in those first couple of chapters they can be so off putting that we, the readers, have to allow them a bit of mercy. After all, we’re starting their story when, most likely, they’re at their worst or already established in their behaviors which, hopefully, they are going to change and grow from during the next three-hundred-or-so pages.
So many of us are like Eleanor Oliphant. We come from a place established by our past, our pride, our lack of desire to change, and it keeps us from spectacular things. This is a story built around the loneliness and awkwardness of a person living a simple, unadorned life—but it’s more than that. It’s about human connection. It’s about not really knowing the people you see on a daily basis. It’s about facing personal demons as a way of moving on towards the best life possible.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.”
“I’d had too much to drink because I’d had too much pain, and there was nowhere else it could go but down, drowned in the vodka. Simple, really.”
“They call young people in care ‘looked after.’ But every child should be ‘looked after’…it really ought to be the default.”
“Obscenity is the distinguishing hallmark of a sadly limited vocabulary.”
Rating: 5/5 stars
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