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Loneliness in the Age of Eleanor
How the feeling is represented in popular culture
One of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever read is called Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. I read it almost three summers ago, in August 2018, and was immediately wowed by it. Now, years later, I’m still wowed by it. Not surprisingly, Honeyman’s debut novel won the Costa Award for first novel in 2017; the book propelled her into international fame and landed in my hands and the hands of many others who no doubt enjoyed the book as much as I did.
What’s surprising to me about the book is that it’s not an immediate draw in. It’s the kind of book I’ll pick up, read the blurb in the back and say, “Meh,” or “Hmm, maybe.” I gravitated towards the latter when I picked it up at the library that summer, and thought it would be an unimaginative, not memorable kind of book. Boy, was I wrong.
It’s an obscure kind of story, about a strange character, Eleanor, who lives in Glasgow (the same town that the author is from) by herself in a small apartment. Every day, she wakes up, goes to her job in accounting (I think) for a graphics design company (again, my memory is kind of hazy here), does her job, comes back home, eats frozen pizza, drinks a little bit of vodka, watches some TV, and goes to sleep. She repeats this cycle until the weekend comes…
