Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Genre: Emotional Drama

Star Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

Introduction

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

Review

Every once in a while, a book comes along that surprises you by how much it sneaks under your skin. Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is one of those. I picked it up expecting a quirky character study and ended up with a story that made me laugh, ache, and finally tear up at the end.

Eleanor is not your typical heroine. She is socially awkward, painfully blunt, and someone who lives by strict routines. Her weekends are spent alone with frozen pizza and vodka, and her interactions at work usually leave her colleagues baffled. At first, she’s hard to love, and you might even wonder why you should. But as the layers peel back, you start to see the loneliness and trauma behind her oddness, and that’s when the book truly takes hold of you.

Honeyman manages to balance Eleanor’s biting humor with her heartbreak. There are passages where her observations about everyday life are so direct they made me laugh out loud. And then, almost without warning, you’re hit with the weight of her past—the cruelty she endured, the isolation she carries, the emptiness that routines barely cover. The shifts never feel forced. Instead, they remind you that laughter and pain often live side by side.

One of the most moving aspects of the novel is the role of connection. A small act of kindness, an unexpected friendship, even a casual conversation—these things slowly start to break down the walls Eleanor has built. It’s never dramatic or sudden. It’s slow, awkward, fragile, and deeply human. That slow unraveling makes the ending so powerful. It isn’t wrapped up like a fairy tale, but it’s hopeful, and it left me with tears in my eyes.

What I loved most was how Eleanor’s voice carried the story. She isn’t written to be likable in the conventional sense, and yet, by the end, I couldn’t help but root for her. Honeyman gives us a character who feels both unique and universal.

For me, this is an easy five-star read. It’s funny, heartbreaking, and quietly uplifting—a book that lingers long after you close it.