This book review was originally published by the Oregon Council of Teachers of English (OCTE) in Spring 2021.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (2017) by Gail Honeyman
In our study of the hero’s journey, I ask students to broaden their concept of the traditional grand epic with its limiting landscape of exclusively male heroes. Cast yourself as the unsung hero in your own journey, I tell them.
Do not wait for demigods to swoop in and save you; choose to save yourself, one quiet act of courage at a time. The interior journey of the heart and soul is just as transformative and often more harrowing than tales of beast-battling warriors.
Enter the title character and unassuming hero of Gail Honeyman’s debut novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, who reminds us that sometimes the most heroic feat is to simply keep going. We meet the 29 year-old self-described “sole survivor” and “self-contained entity” in the midst of her very small and almost pathologically independent existence.
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| Cover Art & Design: Jaya Miceli/Soleil420 |
Socially oblivious and hilariously deadpan Eleanor crafts a plan to change her life by pursuing a narcissistic musician, yet her real call to adventure comes in the form of the bumbling office IT guy enlisting her reluctant aid to a stranger who collapses on the street.
She is then nudged out of isolation by mentors and guides who eventually catalyze her to face the horrors of her past, speak the truth about them aloud, and learn to open her heart.
At one point, Eleanor asks, “How do I fix me?” to which the answer is, “You’re doing it already, Eleanor. You’re braver and stronger than you give yourself credit for. Keep going.”
Like Eleanor, we all long to “solve the puzzle of me.” In this story, the hero’s choice is not whether to sacrifice herself for others in the vein of the classic epic, but whether to sacrifice her carefully constructed world in order to save herself.
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