

I find lateness exceptionally rude it’s so disrespectful, implying unambiguously that you consider yourself and your own time to be so much more valuable than the other person’s. When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life. What they fail to understand is that you don’t need anyone, you can take care of yourself. I simply didn’t know how to make things better. This book outsold every other book in the UK in 2018.Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are.Did this confuse you, distract you, or enrich the experience for you? Do you think these kinds of things should be “translated” or explained for an American audience? Why or why not? There is a lot in the book that is very specific to British culture, like the references to tea and to different kinds of supermarket brands.

What do you think it adds to the story that it is told in first person from the point of view of an unreliable narrator – not a malicious one, but one who is suppressing certain truths and memories from herself?.Were you hoping Eleanor and Raymond would end up dating? Why or why not? Do you think they might get together later, after the novel ends?.What role do you think the cat plays in Eleanor’s healing, if any?.Did you have any theories about what had happened to Eleanor as the story progressed? What were they?.By the end of the book, her life includes warmth and friendship and the sense of belonging she has never really had. When Eleanor was 10, her mother burned the house down, killing herself and Eleanor’s sister – and the fallout from this is the source of her scars, much of her trauma, and many of her defence mechanisms. She begins to heal, and we learn that the weekly conversations with her overbearing, manipulative mother were actually all imaginary. When Eleanor is absent from work, and, in fact, planning her suicide, Raymond is sent to investigate, and he helps her to get better by encouraging her to see a doctor and a counsellor, and giving her a cat to look after. This sets in motion a friendship both with Raymond and with the older gentleman and his family. Her carefully planned life begins to unravel when she leaves work one day with a colleague, Raymond, and they witness an older gentleman fall in the street. She has no friends, unless you’re counting her meticulously planned daily routine and the two bottles of vodka she drinks at the weekends. By signing up you agree to our terms of use Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine SummaryĮleanor Oliphant is 29 years old, single, and highly intelligent. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox.
