It took me a moment or two to learn the shapes, and then I was able to copy them. “Then the beat changed abruptly and everyone started doing the same thing, making strange shapes with their arms above their head. I laughed out loud when she described the dance floor at a wedding: Things that aren’t usually amusing all of a sudden become so. Looking through Eleanor’s eyes is like looking at the world through funhouse mirrors. Reading the novel is also delightfully funny. That suspense makes the book compelling, vivid, and delightfully frustrating.

The reader doesn’t find out exactly what happened until the final pages, even though it feels like the answer might be coming at nearly every turn. So bad that it explains why she has no friends and lives a reclusive life. So bad that it left a scar covering half her face. “The holy trinity of Oliphant expressions.”

“Ah, I knew them well,” Eleanor narrates. Something that makes people pity her, like the social worker who, when speaking to her, trails off, “looking awkward, sad, embarrassed.” The place is outfitted with furniture that “was provided by a charity that helps vulnerable young people and ex-offenders when they move into a new home.” During that visit, Eleanor, who narrates the novel in the first person, reveals that social workers visit her biannually at the apartment she’s lived in since she was 17, when social services arranged for her to move there after her final foster placement.

Everything’s fine,” she tells the social worker who visits her early in the story. On Fridays, she buys a frozen pizza, a bottle of chianti, and two bottles of vodka, and drinks and sleeps until Monday comes back around. She works Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. The title Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fineis declarative enough to give rise to a silent question, one that becomes vexing within the first few pages of the book: Is Eleanor fine?Įleanor, at least for the majority of the story, is convinced that, yes, she is.

Eleanor oliphant is just fine