This was another one for the book club. I guess we're meeting every 2 weeks, which I guess means it will consume more of my reading than I expected it to. Last weekend, after I finished my puzzle, I started Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist and I read it daily in the mornings and evenings through the week, but it's a slow read, so I realized yesterday I had better set it aside to read the book club book and go back to it when I finished. I thought I had checked out the e-book of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine from the Brooklyn Public Library, but it turned out I had checked out the Spanish language edition and the English language edition wasn't available from there or the NYPL, so I had to buy it. I should have planned better.
Things did not start off auspiciously. I was ambivalent going in. I was a little mad at myself for not having finished The Conservationist already. I was annoyed that I had messed up the library thing and had to spend $9.99. And I just wasn't sure about the book. And then when I started it, I had the sense for a while that reading it was a very bad idea. There were several times when I thought this book would have to be a new addition to the list of books I had to stop reading because I was sure terrible things were going to happen to the central characters. Although I was fairly certain this was a book with a happy ending, I found myself quite anxious for the first 90 pages or so. I was afraid of what I would have to go through before I got to the happy ending. There was one chapter that was particularly painful. (This sometimes happens to me in the most unexpected places, and definitely comes down to my own mood. Like, I love rom coms, but sometimes I can't bear watching them because I know I will have to sit through the misunderstanding that threatens to end the relationship before the eventual reconciliation.) But then things picked up, and this morning I found myself looking forward to reading the book. I had to stop when I sensed a very cringey moment coming on and it was immediately followed by a section break, with the new section under the title "Bad Days." Oh no, I thought. I set aside my iPad and had a piece of cake and thought maybe I would wait until tomorrow to go back, but after the cake I felt able to face the book again and, in fact, the thing I had been dreading did not happen (though arguably something much worse did). The truth is that terrible things did happen to Eleanor Oliphant, but they happened before the book even begins and the whole book is about her own coming to terms with them - and with herself, with the support of friends. As things looked up, I found myself tearing up often. The resolution was a bit too simplistic, but it was sweet (borderline saccharine, if I'm honest) and comforting.
