This is a novel that seems to utterly divide opinion, but my opinion is that it is brilliant! It's very rare that I read a novel that continues to haunt me once I've closed the book and put it on the bookshelf, but here I was so gripped by the main character that I woke up thinking about her today. Eleanor has such a unique voice and such a strange, but utterly compelling backstory, that I was completely captivated and all the time I was reading it was a case of heart-in-mouth - desperate for her to have a happy ending, and almost terrified that she wouldn't. Gail Honeyman has written such a clever novel from a technical point of view - enough foreshadowing that makes the discovery of how she has become what she is, believable, and enough misleading plot to make it touch-and-go whether she will get the ending we, as readers, want her to achieve. I understand that Reese Witherspoon has optioned this for a film and I do hope so, I'd be first in line at the cinema!!
This bittersweet novel needs exactly that same bittersweet chocolate and this was my choice; dark chocolate-covered almonds. I bought them on Amazon, whereas previously I would have bought them from Aldi, but I am boycotting Aldi at the moment. They have built an Aldi in Welwyn Garden City, where I live, with no pedestrian access, so if you want to walk to the store - which is in the town centre - you have to take you life in your hands by walking along the road leading into the car park. Very unpleasant, even more so if you are pushing a baby in a pushchair (which, as a new grandma, I often am) - baby's face and car exhaust being on the same level, for one thing, and just the sheer danger factor on the other.
Still, enough ranting for a Sunday morning. Massive thumbs down for Aldi but massive thumbs up for chocolate almonds and Eleanor Oliphant!!
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