ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant is socially awkward but has a decent job in Glasgow, where she lives alone and drinks lots of vodka to get through the weekends.  Then a computer virus causes her to meet Raymond, the IT guy at her company.  The two become oddball friends, but Eleanor has developed a crush on a local rock singer.  She bears scars on her face from a fire but her sudden interest in the singer inspires her to cut her waist-length hair and undergo a makeover.  She may be able to conceal the facial scars, but she has managed to bottle up deeper emotional scars that ultimately lead her to question her self-worth.  We don’t learn the details of the fire or, for that matter, the horrors of her childhood at the hands of a physically and emotionally abusive mother, until very late in the novel.  Her friendship with Raymond, however, leads her to come out of her shell somewhat and meet his mother, as well as the family of an elderly man whom they assist after a fall.  In some ways this novel reminded me of Bridget Jones’s Diary, in that Eleanor is focused on impressing the wrong guy and drinks too much, and Eleanor is just as predictable as Bridget but not nearly as funny.  Actually, Eleanor’s childhood trauma is so severe that I’m not really sure if this books is supposed to be funny, although a number of reviewers have described it as hilarious.  In my opinion she is also delusional, with regard to her crush, among other things, and I suppose her delusions are a result of the horrors she suffered as a child, but I didn’t quite get the connection.  As for the book’s predictability, there’s only one remotely surprising revelation near the end, and I had to kick myself for not having seen it coming, as it mirrors a similar revelation in The Woman in the Window.