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Gail Honeyman: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (AudiobookFormat, 2017, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd) 3 stars

Review of 'Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

my first attempt so read the book resulted in not wanting to read further than just a few pages. Eleanor was seemed so annoying to me. So I didn't finish the book.
second attempt: let's try the audio book. Again I was annoyed. But the narrator is so good that I gave it a second chance. Still, Eleanor was annoying, her character seemed not likeable. She was judgmental, thought poorly of, for example, fat people. Also, the way she expresses herself, speaks was very strange and yes, annoying.
But as I continued listening, she grew on me. Bit by bit she unsurfaced her past and that explained so much. It explained her behaviour, her thoughts, her opinion of others.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is a surprising book. There is strong character development. She grows from a socially isolated woman who is traumatised by her childhood to a woman with friends, who goes to therapy to finally work on the things she carried for so long. But one thing that bothers me is that she doesn't discuss her problem with alcohol with her therapist. I think the author should have included that as well. Because in the book it seems as if you just need to stop drinking and that's it. Eleanor even had an alcoholic drink shortly after her breakdown. I don't know much about alcoholism and recovery. But the way it's described doesn't feel realistic. After her breakdown, she doesn't drink for, I don't know, a week? two? Then she has one drink after a very intense therapy session and than ... nothing? And Raymond has a drink when they met and she isn't affected by that?

All in all the book turned out to be good. But the alcoholism part felt, as I said, not right, and it should have been addressed more/better. 
But I am glad to have given the book a second chance.