Book Review 2: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)

 Loneliness is the new cancer and Cancer kills. But CANCER is only a WORD, not a SENTENCE. So is loneliness.

What a treasure to find Ms Oliphant, a character with a tormented past, a survivor like an unsteady paper towel reaching for the sky, a woman with an obsessive compulsive behaviour, few friends and practically everyone in the office thinks she is looney. But pity Eleanor not, she sees herself as a self-contained entity.

       I resonated with her, in a way with no other character I have ever read. With the book “A Woman of Substance” by Barbara Taylor Bradford, I emerged wanting to be “A woman of Substance” in my own right and leave footprints in the sands of time (of course that was short-lived)! With Eleanor Oliphant, I felt someone was writing about me. As with my own life, I just kept rooting for 30 year-old Eleanor … Go Girl, You can DO IT. “Jia You” as the Chinese would say.

    Eleanor is brave, kind and quirky. She is the kind of woman who informs her doctor that she has back pain because she is carrying 7 pounds of combined breast tissue. And how did she get this definitive value? Not being a woman of means, Eleanor just weighed her breasts individually ..”plonk”.. on her kitchen scales.  No fuss.

         This book evokded a spectrum of emotions. With incidents like Eleanor getting a bikini waxing (Holywood style), Eleanor looking at herself in the mirror and thinking “nothing to see here, plain from end to end,” to the day the Universe sends her an incident that will forever change her path, I grieved and chuckled with her.

          Eleanor Oliphant is Gail Honeyman’s first novel. I am looking forward to her next one. Please write quickly, Girl! This book is not a thriller but the author’s writing is so hilarious, you want to keep turning the pages. Just let me quote one section where Eleanor is instructed to keep talking to an elderly gentleman who had just toppled backwards and was knocked out cold. What would you or I say? Me, most definitely, “Sir, are you OK? Don’t worry, I’ve called the ambulance. It’ll be here soon. Just stay with me.” 

        What does Eleanor say? “What a lovely sweater, you don’t see that colour often on a woollen garment? Would you describe it as vermillion? Or carmine, perhaps? I rather like it. I wouldn’t attempt such a shade myself, of course. But, against the odds, I think you just about carry it off.” Seriously, the man is lying on the road, probably on the brink of death.

           Maybe, some will find this book a little lacking in depth. But on days when my Savvy K has her diva moments and my Gizmo man glares at me cos’ I wouldn’t cook dinner, I  get out my kindle, relive “Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine,” and 

       "Sassy JAM is PERFECTLY  FINE” too.

Book Review – The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

   

      A psychological thriller that does NOT slowly build up to a crescendo, I got hit in Chapter One, page one with Alicia Berenson, an artist/painter who shoots her husband point-blank in the face. She attempts suicide by slashing her wrists and it takes three police officers to stop her. She never speaks again but, when under house arrest, she picks up her brushes and paint, and starts a naked self-portrait of herself. It is entitled Alcestis, only one word in Greek lettering written on the canvas. Is this her sole communication, her testimony to her crime?

      Six years later, a forensic psychotherapist, Theo Faber arrives at the Grove, hell-bent to help the unreachable Alicia when others have failed. He is brave to insist on talking with her one-to-one; no response at the start, then a challenge in her look, a smile, a stare. The novel juxtaposes the complicated past lives of Theo and Alicia with their present interactions in the institution.

      I found the novel riveting. The inclusion of family and friends, all with skeletons in their closets forced me to rethink countless of times as I tried to unravel the mystery. The novel was a good read not because it was The #1 New York Times Bestseller, but because it led me on a guessing game of “why did Alicia do it or did Alicia do it?” 

I read all my books on Kindle, a birthday present from Gizmo man.