January book club brought us Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, and I’m still thinking about it. This is one of those books that sneaks up on you. At first, Eleanor feels… odd. She’s almost uncomfortable to read at times. But as the story unfolds, you begin to realize just how much pain she is carrying, and how carefully the author lets us live inside Eleanor’s loneliness without rushing to “fix” her. I appreciated that so much.
One of the most powerful takeaways for me was how small kindnesses, often from unexpected people, can be genuinely life-altering. Not grand gestures or knight in shining armor sweeping rescues. Just consistent, quiet kindness. So that I don’t give away too much, at this point I’ll share the synopsis:
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
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.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
The only way to survive is to open your heart.
I’ve had this book on my radar for many years and am so glad I was urged to pick it up. Eleanor proved to be a wonderful way to kick off our 2026 reading year.
Eleanor Oliphant may be completely fine… but my TBR pile is not. So many books to read, so little time. :-)
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