Our book group choice for July 2018 is Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. 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.
Discussion Questions Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
- What were your first impressions of Eleanor? Were you sympathetic– even before you realised what a terrible trauma she had been through?
- I wondered whether Eleanor was on the autistic spectrum as well as being profoundly lonely and damaged by past events. Or perhaps her experiences have caused this ‘odd’ behaviour. What do you think? Nature or nurture?
- Why do think she suddenly developed a fixation on Johnnie Lomond?
- The quote on cover of book is ‘Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than… fine.’ It took just one person to help Eleanor start her journey to reconnect with the rest of the world. Do you think that you would you be able to do what Raymond did – for example reaching out to someone you work with who seems a bit lost/disconnected?
- There are some pertinent (but rather blunt and judgemental) observations that Eleanor makes about the behaviour of other people; particularly the suitability of people for customer-facing roles. She has high expectations of other people but where do you think this comes from?
- Does the act of helping someone else begin to unlock Eleanor from her rigid routine?
- Eleanor likes re-reading Jane Eyre and Sense and Sensibility to calm herself down. What, if any, similarities do you think the author is trying to make between Eleanor and these books?
- Did you guess that Eleanor’s mother was a voice inside her own head? What did you think about the way that the truth was unravelled?
- Eleanor’s visits to her therapist reminded me of the Examined Life by Stephen Grosz – talking around the problem until everything falls into place. Is it always better to know the full truth, rather than not know?
- It could be said that the Eleanor we meet in the first part of the book has got stuck in the process of grieving. Who is she grieving for? Is she grieving for both her sister and her mother?
- There is a difference between loneliness and being alone – which is Eleanor?
- Eleanor has adopted an insular way of living. What is she trying to protect herself from? Is she worried that she might become like her mother?
- Years of her life appear to be missing. Is it puzzling that no one else had reached out to Eleanor before? In particular, I’m thinking of foster carers/social workers who knew what she had been through.
- Was the character of Eleanor believable? Was her transformation realistic?
- Is Raymond especially kind or is this something anyone could do? The author shows that Raymond’s mother is kind and has done a good job of bringing up her son. Is she deliberately trying to show the power of nurturing?
- What do you think might have happened to Eleanor if Raymond hadn’t befriended her? Would she still have pursued the Johnnie Lomond character and never realised that he was ”an arse”?
- Do you think that Eleanor and Raymond might have a romantic future together, or is it a platonic friendship? What do you like to think happened next?
- Did you find the book ultimately sad or optimistic? Or both?
- “If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say”. Obviously she’s not fine at all but do you think that she herself ever really believed that she was fine?
- Apparently, Reese Witherspoon has bought the film right to the book. Do you see her as being a good Eleanor and do you think the film would still work if it was set in the US?
Individual Ratings
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