Five Stars

Best for: Anyone looking for a meaningful read that, despite being nearly 400 pages, flies by.

In a nutshell: Eleanor Oliphant is nearly 30 and has lived her life alone since leaving foster care. But when she and her colleague witness a man take a bad fall on the street, she starts down a path towards confronting her loneliness and her past.

(Read the synopsis online, as I fear I’m not doing it justice.)

Worth quoting:
“Human mating rituals are unbelievable tedious to observe. At least in the animal kingdom you are occasionally treated to a flash of bright feathers or a display of spectacular violence.”
“All of the people in the room seemed to take so much for granted: that they would be invited to social events, that they would have friends and family to talk to, that they would fall in love, be loved in return, perhaps create a family of their own.”
“I could see no point in being anything other than truthful with the world. I had, literally, nothing left to lose. But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I’d worked out that social success is often build on pretending just a little.”

Why I chose it:
This book is everywhere over here. By the fifth or sixth time I saw it on prominent display at a bookshop, I decided perhaps it was time to pick it up.

Review:
Is all fiction this good? I’ve read 16 books this year, and only two are fiction, and they’ve both been fantastic. I’m pretty sure I say this every time I read fiction — I’m just usually so taken with nonfiction that I don’t make time to read fiction, and that clearly isn’t great. There’s so much to think about with good fiction.

In this case, the main topics are loneliness, friendship, kindness, and how we learn how to navigate the world. As we start the book, Eleanor seems a bit like an odd duck. She has a very specific daily and weekly routine, she isn’t looked upon highly by colleagues (not for her work, but for her personality), and she doesn’t have any friends. She seems to view the weekend as just marking time until Monday rolls back around.

Early on, we learn that she has some sort of scar on her face, and that she spent her youth in care homes until she moved into her current flat in council housing right after graduating university. She has no friends, and her only family is her Mummy, who is away somewhere but calls every Wednesday. Mummy is extraordinarily cruel.

I think some of the brilliance of Eleanor is that the things she thinks and says are (for the most part) totally logical, but don’t actually apply to how we interact as people. She is flummoxed by the idea, for example, that someone would say a party starts at 7 PM but then find it to be rude if people actually showed up at 7 PM. I mean, she’s right. It’s weird. But we’ve all picked up on the social cues about things like attending parties, or interactions with people we’ve just met. She hasn’t.

This is the kind of book that I wish I’d read as part of a book club, because I want to talk about it with people, like right now.

Four Stars

Best for: Anyone who wants to get the conversation about death going. I know, probably not many folks want to, but the book makes a good case for it.

In a nutshell: UK palliative care physician Dr. Kathryn Mannix shares stories from her 40 years working with individuals to manage their symptoms and help with their end of life.

Worth quoting:
“This conspiracy of silence is so common, and so heartbreaking. The elderly expect death, and many try to talk to others about their hopes and wishes. But often they are rebuffed by the young, who cannot bear, or even contemplate, those thoughts that are the constant companions of the aged or the sick.”
“It’s not about ‘getting better’ — bereavement is not an illness, and life for the bereaved will never be the same again. But given time and support, the process itself will enable the bereaved to reach a new balance.”
“It’s a truth rarely acknowledged that as we live longer thanks to modern medicine, it is our years of old age that are extended, not our years of youth and vigour. What are we doing to ourselves?”

Why I chose it:
I saw this at a shop I visited recently, and it jumped out at me. While I don’t have my job anymore, my interest in making sure that the lives of those who are dying and the lives of their family and friends are as well-supported as possible hasn’t gone away.

Review:
I’ve read a couple of books like this. There’s Being Mortal and On Living, and they all take different approaches to the topic. While this isn’t my favorite of the three (I think Being Mortal still is), I think it has the best organization and readability. After finishing it, I feel that I’ve both learned more about life and death AND had opportunities to think about it in relation to my own life.

The book is organized into sections, and each chapter is a story about one or two of Dr. Mannix’s patients. It isn’t presented chronologically, so sometimes Dr. Mannix is just starting out as a doctor, and sometimes she’s got two teenagers at home. Shestarts with providing information about the physical aspects of death (how it actually happen, which doesn’t seem to be that similar to what we see in media), then moves on to how people who are dying can gain back some control, how families and those who are dying can face their new reality. It ends looking at ideas of legacy and broader meanings of life.

I know. I mean, sure, a book about death and dying is going to be deep, but this is like Marianas trench deep.

What I liked most is that at the end of each section, there’s literally a chapter called “Pause for Thought,” where Dr. Mannix asks the reader to actively reflect on what they’ve just read, and think about how it might apply or have applied in their own life.

I know that not everyone is as interested in this topic as I am (especially considering in my personal life I’ve been lucky enough to not lose anyone close to me, although obviously that will end at some point), but I still think most people could benefit from reading this book.