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.You can believe the publicity: Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine certainly is sweet and quirky. Eleanor is an oddball: understands and doesn't seem to care that she's not like anyone else; she's perfectly capable of slipping into a room unobserved and chuckling along with the mean gossip her coworkers invent about her. But while her cohorts certainly see her facial scars, unfashionable clothes, and brusque manner, they have no clue about the rows of empty vodka bottles on Eleanor's kitchen floor, or the weekly phone calls she receives from Mummy. At the moment that this sweet and quirky tale took a turn for the dark, I thought I was going to be in for something special, but...meh. Despite trying pretty hard, this novel never does get deep, and what's left on the surface is just all okay. (Note: These quotes are pulled from an Advanced Reading Copy, and while they may not appear here as they will in the final edit of the book, I just can't help myself.)
The scalp massage at the hairdresser, the flu jab I had last winter – the only time I experience touch is from people whom I am paying, and they are almost always wearing disposable gloves at the time. I'm merely stating the facts. People don't like these facts, but I can't help that. If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE, is what you say.We learn fairly quickly that “completely fine” for Miss Eleanor Oliphant is the mask she chooses to wear in public. Dark hints are made about events in her past – a fire, foster care, her Mummy taken away – and for most of this book, the tension between what is revealed and what is hidden is really well maintained. Having never had a friend in her life, when Eleanor needs the help of the new IT guy at work, and she and this Raymond are further brought together by outside circumstances, there begins a pretty predictable metamorphosis storyline (but, yes, with some small surprises in the details). The following is one of Eleanor's frequent ironic observations:
The lift jerked skywards and I read a small sign, placed at eye level, which helpfully informed passengers that they were currently traveling in Scotland's oldest working lift. Whilst age is a boon in, say, fine wines and rosewood furniture, I'm not sure that it is a selling point when it comes to mechanical apparatus transporting one at speed in the opposite direction to the earth's gravitational force. For preference, I'd far rather have been ensconced in Scotland's newest lift, really.These wry observations, a habit of blurting out whatever is on her mind, veddy proper speaking and writing styles, and a total lack of pop culture knowledge is all meant to combine into something approaching charm, but in the end I found it all wearying. Yes, Eleanor wasn't allowed to watch TV when she was a child, and yes, her Mummy drilled her daily with the rules of proper elocution, but would a woman, now thirty, who has been in foster families (starting at age ten), gone to University, worked in the public sphere – someone who reads widely, listens to radio programmes, and prides herself on her crossword solving abilities – really have never heard of SpongeBob SquarePants (What is that meant to be? Cheese?) or the Village People's biggest hit (Is that a song about “a gender- and faith-based youth organization”?) or the Grinch (“I don't get that cultural reference”)? When speaking to someone about the difference between men's and women's washrooms, would anyone say, “Imagine having to micturate in a row, alongside other men”? Micturate? And that's my biggest problem with this book: There are a thousand pop culture references that I'm too uncool to understand – just ask my kids – and it would have been easy to make Eleanor the odd duck among her peers by making her unaware of, say, Tinder or memes or something from current drug culture (420 blaze it!); sorry, but no one who solves cryptic crosswords has never heard of SpongeBob, or YMCA, or the Grinch. And no one, after twenty years on her own, would say “micturate” instead of “urinate” (and countless other vocabulary examples from the book), no matter how fussy her Mummy's elocution style. I am prepared to buy into an odd duck character, but only if she's believable. (Now that I think about it, Eleanor is kind of like the Amy Farrah Fowler character when she first appeared on The Big Bang Theory; before they decided to make her like a flesh and blood person.)
I very nearly found this book touching at a few different points, until the wrong word or phrase would pop me back out of the story; I just couldn't sustain the suspension of disbelief, and that's a fatal flaw. I see lots of high ratings, so this might well be a big book this year. Meh.
