Eleanor Oliphant has now reduced me to tears twice, and I’ve barely passed half way. First time it was just ordinary everyday human warmth, and the second was someone sharing in another’s loss. But then I came to a passage I couldn’t read – the beginning section of chapter 22 which I sense is a particularly pernicious telephone call from mother. I skipped it and Eleanor’s life goes on with the incidental kindnesses of social encounters. Staying on the surface people can extend a generosity of spirit. Eleanor and Raymond, Sammy’s family, the shop assistants and waiters.
And then this morning I turn the page and see “Bad Days”. I had missed the earlier heading Good Days and didn’t notice that the book was divided into parts. I wonder whether it has a third part, like a three act play. If there’s to be a resolution then what could it be. Some unexpected reversal or are we going to sink into despair.
I saw a film a month or so ago called Stations of the Cross (Dietrich Bruggemann, 2014). It’s a German film about a young girl who is destroyed by fundamentalism of an ultra conservative Catholic family. I felt like screaming at the film, screaming Stop, Leave her alone, and somehow breaking into the story line and rescuing her. I think all those years of psychiatry have left me with a view of humanity that alternates between despair and anger. Why are people so cruel and destructive? Why do they want to tear everything apart? I know that’s naive but I find it so hard just to sit by and watch (or read), as if I’m somehow complicit in letting it happen.
The heading Bad Days is like opening a door into my worse fears for the vulnerable soul at the centre of the story. I actually don’t like the word “story” or rather I think it’s overused in the media. Everything in the World Service news bulletins is referred to as a story. “And now for some more stories….”, the announcer announces as the tales of one disaster after another are recounted without hardly any shift in intonation. Drama is supposed to transport us safely into worlds outside our reach. To be a witness, to challenge our responses should we ever be a participant. I suppose I have been a participant in life’s conflicts. Anyway despite all the above I am really enjoying the book.
I love interweaving story lines especially real ones. I think it is deep shared experience that draws people together, the inter-subjectivity of the soul.