On How You Can, In Fact, Tell a Person by Their Book Cover

[thisnewday]

Our monthly book club at the Liverpool Public library met this morning to discuss our reading of Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

It's about a socially inept woman of about thirty years of age who is physically and emotionally scarred in the aftermath of a horrific childhood and, while proclaiming herself a survivor, gradually reveals that she's actually living her life in anticipation of a drug-induced endgame.

The following are a few quick notes that I jotted down just before leaving for this meeting.

1. The first time I sat down with this book I had a strong feeling that (a) I'd known the protagonist from some previous time or place and (b) strongly disliked her beyond her role as Honeyman's central character.

2. Later, as I debated whether to continue reading the book or not, I realized where we'd previously met. Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Fredrik Backman's Britt Marie.

3. Then I pulled out Backman's Britt Marie Was Here, which I'd read a year and a half earlier--and had disliked with similar intensity--and read the following three statements on the inside front cover. "Britt Marie is difficult, demanding, and socially awkward; Britt Marie is loyal, brave and has a bigger heart than anybody knows; Britt Marie is ready for a change--but even she will be surprised by what happens next." Bingo!

4. After that, I noticed some striking similarities in the cover art: the two women are dressed similarly, stand in an arms-crossed defensive posture, and their faces are invisible. Britt Marie's because she is facing away and Eleanor's because, although she's facing towards us, her head is above the area framed by the book cover. The intent, in both cases, is to convey the character's invisibility in the world outside the narrow confines of their own lives.

5. Then I wondered if, as in the cover art, we're being shown two sides of the same character.

6. Decided that this would've made a great paper for Intro to Lit in my freshman year of college. (But probably wouldn't have cut it in sophomore year.)

7. As I continued to puzzle over the intensity of my dislike for these fictional characters, I decided that if I ever published my own story, I'd be standing sideways on the cover with my head sandwiched between their two books.

8. Get it?

LPK
Dreamwidth
8.23.2018

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

I don't get it, actually. :-) Unless you're saying that you're invisible. Which you're not to me—I enjoy reading what you write.

I've never heard of either of these two books! Which is odd since I read so much. Did you read them both for the same book club? I tend to require charm in at least one of the protagonists of any book I read, so I'm thinking I would not like either of these novels very much.

[thisnewday]

I had actually read three of Backman's more recent books on my own. I'd been in the habit, if I liked a particular book, of buying and reading any others that I could find by the same author.

Which is what I did with Backman. Except I did so without having read anything except the gushing reviews and maybe admiring the cover art.

After reading the first one, "My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry," with it's depressing parade of socially-inept characters, I thought, hmm, surely the next one has got to be different.

It wasn't. "A Man Called Ove" was even more depressing. I think the highlight of it was its introduction of Britt Marie, the subject of the third book in this downwardly-spiraling catalog of social misfits, "Britt Marie Was Here."

By the time I was done with that one, I found myself searching the internet for the news of the author's suicide because, God knows, I was ready to kill myself after simply reading them.

(But, fear not, he soon published another--which I didn't read-- while still riding the, in my opinion, inexplicable wave of international acclaim garnered by the aforementioned three.)

To answer your question--and mine--I finally concluded that I so thoroughly disliked his protagonist, Britt Marie, because I saw so much of myself in her pathologically inept behavior.

(Hence my own book cover which purports to show a third side to yet another pathetic trio.)

So, if you have an end-of-summer beach read to suggest--although I'm pretty sure that's not your genre, I'm ready...

[mallorys_camera]

I loved The Goldfinch (Donna Tart.) That was 2016's Big Beach Book, I seem to recall.

[thisnewday]

GREAT! Thank you! I'm ON it!

[bluecatartist]

Thanks for the heads up on the book "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine." It's been one I'd thought of getting from the library but as I no longer have the patience when the protagonist is unlikable I can mark it off the list. :)

[thisnewday]

You're certainly welcome, although I have to admit that both characters have their redeeming qualities and show some promise, at the end, of making something of them. Both for themselves, the others in their lives, and for the author's long-suffering readers.

The other redeeming quality, in the case of "Eleanor Oliphant," is the humor which occasionally lightens the mood. And that, for me, made it more palatable than I remember "Britt Marie" being.

I guess, after all is said, I'm glad that I read it, but it's probably not the best choice if you're in a difficult place in your own life--which I have been for quite some time.

I'm definitely looking forward to moving on from it, even if what I move on to is not particularly groundbreaking or otherwise significant...