A novel of very British difference (Morituri te Salutant*)

10th October 2018

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, a novel of very British difference (set in Glasgow).

This is a novel of loneliness and difference and feels very pertinent at this time when loneliness has become an epidemic, a surprising spike among younger people (read more via The Telegraph)

Yes, Eleanor is an oddball, someone who has failed to find social balance, she is a figure of fun at work, with her long hair down to her legs and practical, velcro shoes. Yet, she stoically wards off the mean and undermining comments from her fellow workers and gets on with her life (with a little help from copious amounts of Vodka).

At a concert she is very taken with pop star Johnnie Lomond, and plots to cast him as the man in her life. The fantasy of course cannot match the reality and she soon realises that she can’t simply command him to be her partner, despite much preparation in the wings.

Raymond at the office is a companionable sort and she soon finds herself spending time with him and learning the ropes of social interaction. They visit his mother together, eat their sandwiches at the same place and it is with him that she learns how to behave with another person and how social norms are all part of the human condition for a potentially fulfilling life.

She has closed down her emotions, she functions and she begins to wonder whether her life is indeed fine. It is clear that some trauma has befallen her (there is a clue on the book cover), as she has scarring across one side of her face. She is also conditioned to speak with her mother, once a week on a Wednesday evening. Within moments of calling, her mother is being utterly abusive to her but again, she sidesteps the nasty words and observations. She has already been damaged on many levels and her mother’s cutting criticism simply gets sidelined. Eleanor also had a longer term relationship that replicated the abuse her mother gave her.

She is intelligent, she has a degree, she is quite cultured (especially when it comes to nutrition and food) and she has wonderful epithets and vocabulary that will have you running to both the English and Latin dictionary. At one point when she experiences for the first time the pain of cosmetic waxing, she exclaims *Morituri te Salutant (which means ‘We who are about to die salute you’).

This is a beautifully told story, written with a lightness of touch and with great insight into the human psyche. It is poignant, ribald and ultimately heart warming to see dear old Eleanor, aged just 30, blossoming and find her way in the world… “Social interaction, it appeared, was surprisingly expensive – the travel, the clothes, the drinks, the lunches, the gifts. I certainly got caught up in it. BUT, if as it seems Eleanor is suffering from a condition on the autism spectrum (there are various indicators in the text that indicate this) then it would be supremely unlikely that she would change in the manner described. That is the one negative.

In terms of location, the Scottish setting does come through but it is the Britishness of this novel that makes the novel feel pertinent and well observed..

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine deservedly won the Costa First Novel Book Award in 2017.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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