Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

There is so much contained within the pages of this relatively short novel that you will be thinking about it for days to come once you finish reading it to the end. There will be things that you hear or read about, and it will take you back to Eleanor. She is the ultimate outsider. While she knows that she is unlike other people it isn't until the middle of the book that you start to get a sense of why it might be. Eleanor feels instantly and insistently real, as if she had been patiently waiting in the wings for her cue all along. Most workplaces have an Eleanor: the slightly odd person who scuttles away from all communal enterprises; who rarely says a word that isn’t about the matter in hand; whose home life can only be speculated about, not always kindly. She is developmentally disabled by the traumas of her youth, and ever so slowly she starts to make slow, believable progress towards becoming more engaged, both in her life and in the lives of others. It is, in the end, a book about not judging a book by it's cover, about being more generous and allowing yourself to be exposed because it might be worth your while to do so.