• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews - Audio And Video Online Reviews 1991-2018
  *Starred Review* Despite the title of this delightful Scotland-set debut novel, 30-year-old Eleanor Oliphant is not completely fine. Sporting a deep scar on her face and lacking friends and social graces, Eleanor spends weekends alone in her apartment eating pizza, drinking, and fantasizing about a local pop star. Slowly, we learn the truth about Eleanor's scar, childhood, and mother, whose weekly phone calls are most upsetting. McCarron's reading is nothing short of stupendous: the array of dialects she seamlessly weaves into her narration puts us smack-dab in Glasgow. Coworker Raymond's accent is a bit less refined than Eleanor's, and his tones are deeper. McCarron quickly changes pitch to represent Mummy's vocal patterns, going from sickeningly sweet to bitterly nasty in an instant. Inebriated characters, elderly persons, and sympathetic mental-health professionals also receive distinct characterizations. McCarron obviously takes great joy in Honeyman's sharp and witty writing, and her deadpan delivery of Eleanor's description of a stranger's face being "as pasty as someone who's never eaten an apple" is an LOL moment. Eleanor is by turns quirky, humorous, sad, sympathetic, and—eventually—pretty darn fine. Catch the audio version of this fan-favorite novel, which has been optioned for a movie by Reese Witherspoon's production company. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Gail Honeyman is a graduate of the universities of Glasgow and Oxford. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine won the Costa First Novel Award and the British Book Awards Book of the Year, was short-listed for the Lucy Cavendish College Fiction Prize, the Desmond Elliot Award, and the Author’s Club Best First Novel, and was long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. This is Honeyman’s debut novel and she lives in Glasgow, Scotland.