Completely fine. 100% fine. a thousand percent fine.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the debut novel for author Gail Honeyman. The book rights have sold for huge sums worldwide and the movie rights now belong to Reese Witherspoon’s new company Hello Sunshine.

In writing Eleanor, Honeyman has created a character I would love to get to know – She is unfiltered, forthright, smart, funny and profoundly lonely. Eleanor has no interpersonal skills, no social skills, no concept of what opportunities life could hold for her and she is very very real, there are parts of Eleanor I see in myself and parts I cannot hope to ever understand. She is an utterly contradictory character; She has a quite warmth coupled with a deep and unspoken sadness, She comes across as harsh and yet totally vulnerable and she is smart as hell but exceptionally naive.

When we meet Eleanor she has a 9 – 5 job, a routine and a carefully timetabled and choreographed life, she is physically and psychologically scared through some traumatic childhood event which is slowly but eventually revealed to the reader. We, the reader, are gradually fed morsels of information until we feel we understand Eleanor and it is then we realize that we don’t have a clue.

Through a series of seemingly innocuous events Eleanor is very slowly drawn into the lives of others and she beings to slowly build connections. These characters she connects with may appear as new fixtures in her life or as brief utterances but they are written with such brilliance that they transcend labels; they are not the good guys, they are not the bad guys, they are not just plot devices, they are real people. Honeyman’s character driven writing is faultless and I want to read more.

Reading Eleanor Oliphant will remind you to take a look at the people you love and say thank you to whoever put them in your life, it will remind you of the importance of friendship, and indeed the importance of human interaction and connection. It will remind you that it is never to late to hope.