She's not completely fine. Neither am I.

I finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman back in early March. I didn't write a review right off and then, it seems, our world has fallen into a weird, scary, confusing place. I spent the last few weeks unsure and waiting. Waiting to see what happens with COVID-19, waiting to be told what to do. Because, I sure as hell didn't know. How do I keep my mom and sister safe? Should I work remote? Will that be seen as extreme?

And here we are. Week 1 of pretty-much mandatory working remote, not seeing my family and friends as much, not getting hugs from my mom. I'm scared to death of what might still happen but I'm trying to stay in a pattern. Some normalcy. I've been able to get groceries, able to get meds, visited my family from a safe distance, but mostly stayed at home. At first, I was too anxious to read or knit. Then I switched off the TV and my anxiety decreased a bit. I'm keeping up on the news through newspapers now, real and online, but trying to avoid social media a bit (except for Mark's daily dance party which is NEEDED right now).

I'm nearing the end of The Wells of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson and am going to use this downtime to keep up on my reading and writing. I've written in my journal nearly every day because we're living in a historical period right now.

Back to Eleanor and why this woman is NOT fine. Right off the bat, you know something isn't quite right. She drinks alone, in her apartment, just enough to keep her lightly drunk from Friday to the start of Monday until she goes back to work to get through the weekend. She's seemingly uptight, precise about everything, and has a lot of reasons on why she looks down on so many people.

Then she meets Raymond. An IT guy who comes to work on her computer at the office, he somehow takes a liking to her. He's described as sloppy and unhygienic by Eleanor but honestly, being in IT myself, I think that Raymond is just a regular IT dude. Raymond is key in helping Eleanor, she just doesn't realize it yet.

Eleanor falls for a local musician, and she falls hard. It was painful reading how she researched (aka stalked) him, how she changed herself for him (but never met him), how her life revolved around a man she never met, while ignoring who was really in her life. Her weekly talks with Mummy were also painful.

Things spiral out of control, Eleanor is not fine, and she finally recognizes her life for what it is. This truly was a great novel, painful on occasion to read, but you can't help but cheer Eleanor on towards a more rewarding life, with people who really do care for her.

Gail Honeyman talks about the novel

An Interview with Gail Honeyman

I know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It is the memory.

The blog title is a quote from Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn. Honestly, so many sentences, paragraphs, chapters in this book are worthy to be memorized and pondered. I got this audiobook from my library on a whim. They had a section for African American History Month and this just called to me.

I've never read anything by Woodson, but she's been on my to-read list. I'm going to steal Roxane Gay's Goodreads review of this because it sums up what I thought "This gorgeous novel is a poem. It is a love letter to black girlhood." I will, obviously, never know what it was like growing up a black girl in Brooklyn in the '70s, but I was happy Woodson let me step into the moment with her.


August and her brother are new to Brooklyn. Forbidden by their father to go outside, they have to watch the kids in the streets from their window. Eventually, their dad relented and let them gradually be one of those kids, dancing to street DJs and playing in the fire hydrant water. Their mother is gone. We don't find out much right away, we just know that August keeps promising her brother that their mother was going to return tomorrow... and tomorrow...and tomorrow.


August ends up finding deep friendships with Gigi, Angela, and Sylvia. They grow up in a time that should be fun, but is often marred by men taking advantage of the teenage girls. Who is around to protect them? No one, and each girl gets marked in some way.


My heart broke for the girls, they had their enormous dreams of fame and fortune, but only a few made it out. When August finally faces where her mother really is and grows up, it's hard. Adults put such weight on children's shoulders and expect them to carry it around every day. But I suppose they still do, in this day and age.



Woodson usually writes YA but this is one of her adult novels. My gut says "Read everything this lady writes" regardless of age group.

“Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone —adults promising us their own failed future.”

Wonderful TED talk by Woodson on slow reading and keeping your story alive

Woodson on Another Brooklyn

No, YOU follow ME to the Ground

I read Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford a bit ago but I didn't know what to say about it because I had no idea what I had just read. I still don't, really, but I'm going to blather on about it anyways.

This was the first book in Jenny Lawson's Fantastic Strangelings Book Club. Of course, I signed up to get the books because 1) I love Jenny and 2) I knew her taste in books would be all over the place and awesome.

Fantastic Strangelings Book Club sign up

Fantastic Strangelings FB page (all welcome to chime in!)

The cool part about the book club is....this book is signed by Sue. :)

I have to talk about this book now, in a way that makes you want to go read it. I know this is going to sound all weird and gibberish, so just go read it.

Follow Me To Ground is a debut novel that is on the edge of fantasy (but it's not really) and folklore (but no, not that) and literary fiction. Ada and her father can cure illnesses. They live on the edge of a village and locals - "Cures" - make appointments to come to them to get cured of whatever ails them. Nearly every ailment is curable, but there are some that are too far gone so Ada and her father do their best to give the person more time and comfort.

They cure by literally cracking open the person's body and removing the sickness. The patient is thankfully asleep because, in order to help fix the patient, Ada and her father bury the patient, alive, in the Ground. The patient is dug up after an appropriate interval and sent home, healthier than when they arrived.

Clearly, Ada and her father are not human, but Ada wants to be more than what she is. The villagers ignore Ada unless they are sick, then the happily interact with Ada and her father. Ada helps cure Samson and ends up taking him as her lover. Olivia, Samson's sister, is pregnant and comes for cures often because of pregnancy issues. Ada's father wants her to stop seeing Samson because, well, he's human and it's going to cause problems for them. Oh, little does he know.

This novel ends in the most intriguing, confusing, eye-opening, OMG way. I was thinking about this for DAYS afterwards trying to maneuver my mind around everything that happened. I plan to re-read it soon to see if I could have picked up on more clues, if they even exist. The author writes in an interesting way and I'm not sure she knows what happened (The author answers questions in the FB group - go take a look).

A talk with the author