Isolation can happen in a city, at work, or anywhere people gather. Those are the same places that relationships grow.
Forever a resident of Ireland, Eleanor Oliphant has no intentions of disrupting her strategic and purposeful regime of work and weekends of pizza and soothing vodka. She has a respectable job, which many may consider boring, a subsidized place to call home, a weekly call to her mum, and her life is plain and simple.
This is her life-long plan to keep the past from distracting the rest of her life.
Her coworkers occasionally whisper or make jokes about her detachment, otherwise they ignore her for anything other than work. The new IT worker, Raymond, is the exception.
Eleanor's computer has an issue, and Raymond eventually gets to her desk. She's not impressed with his careless dress and sloppy attitude. It surprises her when he somehow inserts himself in small parts of her days until they help rescue an older man who's fallen on the sidewalk and needs an assist.
Raymond is super friendly, ready to give a hand, and always open for a new friend. Eleanor is the opposite, so she grudgingly responds on limited terms. Besides, she recently decided to remake herself from the outside, to hide her ugly past, and find the perfect man she saw in an ad for a local concert. How hard can it be?
This is a lovely story of unassuming colleagues getting to know each other, while having no intentions. As details of their lives are slowly exposed, their need and respect grow. It's this that helps Eleanor realize what she has to do to be whole and happy and Raymond is a specific ingredient.
Happy reading,
Dawn Kunda
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