Soon to be a major motion picture produced by US actress Reese Witherspoon, this novel tells the story of a hard-working, if rather eccentric, office manager who has always lived her life being just “fine.” The novel’s protagonist, Eleanor Oliphant, thinks there is nothing amiss in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with “Mummy.” In this charming debut novel, Gail Honeyman draws us into Eleanor’s meticulously structured world until we see that it is the protagonist’s difficult childhood that is driving her clockwork routines. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, a geeky IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond save an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kind of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. This is an uplifting story about a quirky heroine whose deadpan weirdness and lovability make for an entertaining journey, as Eleanor realizes the only way to really live is to connect — with herself and others.