“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”
Everyone has at some point in their lives, experienced loneliness. But what does being lonely actually mean? Does it mean you don’t go out with anyone or have no friends to hang out with? Or does it mean you cannot connect with your family and are unable to share anything with them?
In Eleanor’s case, it means she doesn’t have a living soul she can call her family or friend. She does have a houseplant named Polly who has been with her for a very long time.
She lives in Glasgow, has a stable job. Weekends are long for her.
‘Monday takes a long time to come around.’
She passes her weekends drowning in vodka and sleeping. She has followed the same routine for years. Sometimes between the time she leaves office on Friday evening and goes back on Monday morning, she had not talked to a single person or heard the sound of her own voice.
There are phone calls with her cruel mummy every week which do her little good.
Being lonely can be terrifying. The irony is that the more people get to know about your loneliness, the more they distance themselves from you. As if there has to be something wrong with you. And the thing is, you can’t get rid of loneliness just by being around people. Unless you form a deeper and personal connection with someone, the feeling will never go away. Eleanor does not live in isolation. She has many colleagues who are aware of her presence and probably even talk to her from time to time on some work related matter. But that doesn’t make her any less lonely.
There is little excitement in her life until she develops a crush on a gig musician, Johnnie Lomond, who by the way is completely unsuitable for her. Her head becomes full of scenarios and possibilities of pursuing a romance with the singer. But the real turning point in her life comes when she meets Raymond, the IT guy. Raymond seems the opposite of Johnnie Lomond. He is unattractive (conventionally atleast). He wears ridiculous clothes. He smells of cooking and cigarettes and his eating habits are quite clumsy.
Now Raymond is not a Prince Charming who will sweep her off her feet and suck the loneliness out of her life. Eleanor doesn’t even take him seriously for a long time. It all happens very gradually. She takes her time getting comfortable with him and their relationship evolves into a beautiful friendship that is based on mutual support and understanding.
Eleanor first meets Raymond when she has a problem with her computer. But the incident that pushes them in each other’s lives is when they help a man named Sammy, who has collapsed on the street.
Sammy is also a wholesome character in the book whose family helps Eleanor see a whole different side of family love. Then there’s Raymond’s mother who is so unlike her own.
The point is, Eleanor has a lot of her presuppositions challenged and has to be introduced to a new set of people to help her navigate the social pathway of life. Unless she is willing to put herself in unfamiliar places, she cannot feel less lonely.
She has set extremely rigid boundaries albeit for self-preservation. But they stop her from opening up to people who could be her potential friends or a soulmate even.
Raymond is not put off by her quirks. He doesn’t make a big deal how she lives her life and just accepts her for who she is and pushes her for the better.
Eleanor, too is wise. There are multiple incidents in the book that shows she has real world practical sensibility. After seeing Johnnie Lomond for the first time, she remarks on his beauty and the people’s perception of beauty.
“Beauty from the moment you possess it, is already slipping away, ephemeral… Suffering other people’s kindness must be difficult too; all those bitter, less attractive people, jealous and resentful of your beauty. That’s incredibly unfair of them. After all, beautiful people didn’t ask to be born that way. It’s as unfair to dislike someone because they’re attractive as it is to dislike someone because of a deformity.”
And then another time she thinks about the double standards of male female attractiveness.
“Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering?”
The ending is quite beautiful. You are expecting something like it but it still gives you the satisfaction without filling you up with unattainable notions of psychological healing.
“In the end, what matters is this: I survived… I survived, Raymond.”
This book had been on my TBR list for quite a long time. I procrastinated on it because I didn’t know this is what I needed to get a new perspective on loneliness. However, I do think that her trauma was quite excessive and it is really incredible how she managed to live a relatively normal life with all that baggage on her back and the childhood trauma she was still struggling with. But I’m glad I read it.
Fun Fact- The book has a Breaking Bad reference. One of the ridiculous shirts that Raymond wears has ‘Los Pollos Hermanos’ written on it. Eleanor does not understand it at all.
Have you read the book? What did you think of it? Let us know in the comment section.
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