Oliphant in the Room . . .

. . . is a pun I can't take credit for (or, for you grammar sticklers, a pun for which I can't take credit).  That's because Eleanor Oliphant said it.  Eleanor is like Susan Green on steroids.  She's particular.  She's an introvert.  She's extremely blunt and judgmental.  She's from the U.K. (albeit Scotland instead of England.)  And she tells us all about it in Gail Honeyman's award-winning Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.  (Full disclosure: this too is a Reese's Book Club pick, and I heard about it on The Cactus's cover.)  But this is the thing (although, if you have a sense of irony, you've probably already figured it out).  Eleanor is not completely fine.  Not even close.  Because beneath her sometimes endearing, sometimes cringeworthy armor of social awkwardness is a world of pain and a deep, dark secret.  She's afraid to rock the boat of her life because the boat she used to be on was burning.  And it isn't until she meets Raymond, the also awkward but confident IT guy at work, that she begins to get better.

Now, I'm not going to say a whole lot about the plot of this book.  Because that would spoil it.  But I will say that Eleanor and Raymond forge a slow, strange friendship.  It defies convention and depends, in part, upon Raymond's patience and good humor.  But it's something that Eleanor desperately needs, even if she can't admit it.  For her, the loner life has become a fortress against growth.  It's a safe space that's starting to suffocate her, even as she clings to it.     

"Some people, weak people, fear solitude.  What they fail to understand is that there's something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don't need anyone, you can take care of yourself.  You can't protect other people, however hard you try."  (134)

Eleanor knows that she can't play the game, and that this is part of why she's alone.  Yet in letting Raymond into her life, she's forced to interact with other people.  And this makes her realize that she needs to bend, however slightly.

"I wasn't good at pretending, that was the thing.  . . . I could see no point in being anything other than truthful with the world.  I had, literally, nothing left to lose.  But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I'd worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little." (198)

So, Eleanor opens herself up to new experiences.  And she stumbles and learns.  Yet she still holds fast to what makes her, well, her.  Which is a sign of strength and bravery, especially after all she's been through.

"Although it's good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it's also extremely important to stay true to who you really are.  I read that in a magazine at the hairdressers."  (174)

Masterful and moving, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is about finding your best self without losing yourself.  I'm not going to lie; it's sometimes hard to read.  But it's also funny and sad and satisfying and all the best things that you (okay, I) want from a novel.

Moving on.

Here are some vintage brooches that I embellished.  The first one is hard to make out - just like our heroine -- but it's an elephant.  And the second one is, of course, a sailboat.  I think that they go well with this post, being old and tired and then shiny and new but still old in a good way.  Even if Eleanor is no champion of crafters, describing one of her colleagues as making hideous jewelry for hideous people.  Or something.

But I won't hold that against her.  I know it's not her fault.  And that she prefers doing crosswords.