Steve’s Comments (group member since May 10, 2024)

Steve’s comments from the Trauma & Dissociation group.

This is a fictional novel and relative easy and light reading compared to our other books. It does fit the group topic though.

I finished this book, also reading it with another book group. It is evident that something is amiss with Eleanor. It is interesting what the average person speculates is afoot. Presumably, a good therapist or anyone who has a similar history would see it different. For a time, there was quite a consensus misread. Then the author answered questions in an interview to set the record straight.

Publisher’s Summary

Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite Fiction (2017)
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart.

This is actually a novel (fiction) for the Dec 2025 BOTM:

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman


This novel deals with childhood trauma, as it affects an adult.

We tied. Last time, I won the time breaker. This time, the other way.

No other nominations. Going with these 4.

She graduates college and mom cannot have anything to do with it. Classically self-absorbed, cannot possibly acknowledge the success of a child. And, dad … she wants him there, … but doesn’t, because it is just way too risky. He might pull an astonishing stunt like he did yelling out something amazingly inappropriate like he did while drunk in church. Wasn’t that Christmas church? Must have been. He similarly minimized her graduation.

She is getting more realistic, but still wears the rosy glasses.

At 85% in, all of the sudden, escape is an option. The oldest sister leaves the home, she gets on a bus, and I like that she did not hug her dad or even speak to him since he looted her piggy bank and drank away the money. Then he parades around as if he did her a favor, because the addict cannot in their own mind do wrong to exercise their addiction. They can rationalize anything … in their own mind. Their logic is … not logic … but they tell themselves and anyone who’ll listen that whatever they do is ok. So, she gets on the bus, denying the hug, and never looks back. Doesn’t look out the window. She isn’t heartless. He is that utterly despicable. Still, the summary makes him sound sweet when he isn’t drinking. But he was sober when he stole the piggy bank from his children and smashed it open, took all the money, and walked to the nearest bar. Piece of work.

Then. The author leaves, and the parent true colors begin to shine brighter. Dad drinks. Mom does her own art thing. They do their thing. They don’t parent the the two remaining kids in the household who are effectively left to fend for themselves. But, they’ve more or less done so from birth so … they manage to survive.

How is it that Mom’s self-absorption and neglectful parenting are not called out? Is that supposed to be acceptable? You just can’t cast an unfit parent down a deep enough well, but there aren’t words here … as much as you might like the writing … to do that. Also conspicuously absent is any recognition for a good parent, or better yet, the parent who faces adversity and rather than abandoning their children or throwing cats out of cars, bends over backwards and seems to draw energy from the muck they find themselves lying in, in the ultimate alchemy of nature, to muster the strength to still do right by their kids. Yet, you’ll find no words of any such appreciation here, … oddly enough. There are just those two huge yawning voids in this book. Huge.

This guy … just jumps into a glossary and is spending a hour defining a bunch of terms. This dives right into a bunch of relatively technical mumbo jumbo. Good grief. This is supposed to be the easy to read version. What on Earth is the thinking organizing and presenting a topic like this?

Imagine the book is called Cars and it starts with an hour of defining car parts. The serpentine belt is a part that ….

Welcome Taylar!

Dad destroys the clay sculpture of his daughter who was trying win an art scholarship. Then, he steals all the money from the the kids piggy bank, which was obvious he was going to do from the moment she said the word. He destroys their dreams and then complains that they aren’t grateful for the lessons he is teaching them. This guy is absolutely horrible, and she doesn’t use strong language to call a spade a spade.

I go to Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) meetings. It is a separate 12-step group. It is pretty amazing how many people come in and won’t say a peep for nearly 6 months. They take awhile to trust people, even just to hear their story. Crazy stuff happens to many of them. I’ve been told multiple times I didn’t fit because I was too functional and not a sufficient train wreck on paper. But, eventually I relate a story and they come later and say wow. That was some legit crazy stuff you went through.

I think one of the stories that sticks with me is a guy telling me how his mom drove to the casino and parked and said she’d be right back. Left him in the car as a small child. Didn’t come back for 3 days.

Her dad is a piece of work. Generally I use that phrase when profanities just won’t suffice. This quote from the summary is not appropriate. It cast him in a positive light as if the drinking is just now and then. But, by my reading, he’s a is an incorrigible wreck all the time. It bothers me that the summary misportrays it so.

When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly.

This wasn’t the easiest read for me. Still going. It is story after story and there is no narrative arc to it. It isn’t going anywhere. That can be OK for a while, but not past halfway. It is just story after story of her parents being an over the top dysfunctional piece of work. And, like I’m Glad My Mother Died, she narrates from the child perspective. There is no looking back commentary on the effects of an event, or an interpretation or feeling. It is only the rather naive and oblivious child perspective. Somewhere at 3/4 through the book, the oldest child finally voices the notion that getting away from a life with these parents might be a good idea, even though it had been beyond the pale from the get go. That is hard to read. I just don’t get that. I think at 3, I started to understood that my parents were a hot mess beyond most people, and I was in danger, and likely would be much happier as all my peers were with relatively normally parents. I get that there is a nature desire to want to see your parents not as a trainwreck … in a wishful thinking way, but to not give voice to any discontent for over a decade of mistreatment is … weird. I get that “normal” is unknowable and you don’t know what your missing exactly when your in the middle of it, but … there is no discussion of normal kids. Only discussion of say the “boyfriend” who was in an arguably even worse predicament. It’s like she is magically blind to normal … unable to see it to comment on it.

I guess I would like a flash back and forward framing, to feel like this is going somewhere and something is being learned from it, and recovery is possible, rather than just endure, endure, endure, overlook, forgive, deny, etc.

Welcome Maggie!

Educated by Tara Westover

A memoir of religion and isolation … too much.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

A boy from Sierra Leone who was forced as a child to be a soldier.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)

This memoir deals with racism, rape, trauma.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

This novel deals with childhood trauma, as it affects an adult.

Please post here to nominate books for the December 2025 book-of-the-month (BOTM). Must have at least 1000 ratings and be remotely related to trauma and/or dissociation. Memoir is the theme for December. Can be non-fiction memoir or something similar fiction.

Just post TITLE by AUTHOR.

Welcome Nicole!
Welcome Azada!