Pen Hanley's Blog

Savouring time – First Class train travel and first class reading

In the days when we had time for afternoon tea …

I used to go into the Co-op Bookshop at ANU in the 1990s, in those days when workers had time for afternoon tea and when the university bookshop used to sell a wide range of high quality books, not today’s electronic gadgets and toys and, apparently as an afterthought, some course handbooks. I used to go there with a friend at afternoon-tea sometimes and he’d say, ‘Prize and size, Penny. Find me a book that’s won something, and find me something brief. Life is short. I don’t have time for 300 page novels.’

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is 383 pages but my old friend would be whipping through it in no time like I’ve just done. And what it might lose in size it makes up for in prize: many prizes. Gail Honeyman’s novel (HarperCollins, 2017) won the Costa First Novel Award for 2017, the British Book Awards Book of the Year for 2018 and several others, including the Specsavers National Book Award for Popular Fiction, as well as making it onto lots of award shortlists and longlists.

Eleanor Oliphant lives an ordered life in Glasgow with defined boundaries and carefully built up habits. She has her job in a Graphic Design office – but not, as she’s quick to point out, doing anything in the creative department. At lunch-time she eats her sandwich in the staff room and does the Telegraph cryptic crossword. That’s where her Classics degree comes in handy.

Outlining her weekend routine takes only a sentence or two and then what comes next tells us everything we need to know about her circumstances: ‘Monday takes a long time to come around.’

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