Name : Fiki Fikria Farhatun Nisa

NIM : 2201419089

Subject : Textbook Review and Writing

Review of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the first novel written by Gail Honeyman. It was first
published in 2017 by HarperCollins for the United Kingdom and Pamela Dorman Books for the United
States, and it has 383 pages in total. As a newly published book in 2017, this novel success winning the
Costa Debut Novel Awards, which is an annual literary award based in Britain and Ireland recognizing
English-language books by writers. In 2018, this book won other awards in the British Book Award
namely  Debut Book of the Year, Overall Winner awards, and Marketing Strategy of the Year award.

Bringing the themes of loneliness and friendship, this book is divided into three main parts
namely Good Days, Bad Days, and Better Days. The first part, good days, contains 25 chapters. It starts
with the introduction of the main character, Eleanor Oliphant. Eleanor is a 29 years old woman working
in a graphic design company and lives in Glasgow. She works from Monday to Friday and spends her
weekends eating pizza and drinking vodka. Then, she would use the rest of her weekend for sleeping,
not talking to anyone. She is an intelligent woman, yet she has a problem with her social life. Having no
friends, she is completely fine enjoying her own life. She doesn’t really care about her look until she sees
Johnnie Lomond, a singer, who is believed by her is her soulmate who will change the life of her into a
completely different life. She then makes a project to win his heart starting from changing her physical
appearance, buying new outfits, and wearing cosmetics. She also buys a new private computer in order
to follow Johnie’s social media. Her mummy who regularly contacts her via telephone knows her project
and supports her. In her journey to meet Johnie, there is a time when Eleanor and her new IT co-worker,
Raymond, come across an elderly man named Sammy who is fallen over. She calls for him an ambulance
and waiting with Raymond until it finally arrives and takes him to the hospital. Days after that, Raymond
frequently asks Eleanor to visit Sammy in the hospital, and both of them then begin the friendship.
Eleanor’s meeting with Raymond widens her social relation. She knows the family of Sammy and also
the mother of Raymond. The second part is the bad days. It starts from chapter 26 until chapter 40. In
this part, Eleanor is ready to meet her love, Johnie Lomond. She attends his concert with hopes that he
could notice her. However, she finds the opposite of her expectation. Realizing that, she goes back to
her home and starts to drink vodka. She also plans to kill herself, yet she coulndn’t make it under the
alcohol effect. She does this for several days until Raymond comes to save her life. He takes care of her
until she recovers. He suggests her to come to the counselor to help her get out of her problems. She
has the counseling with the help of Dr. Maria Temple. Eleanor then talks about her love towards Johnie,
her childhood experience, the fire incident that then makes her remember about her little Marianne.
Knowing that her mummy set the fire to kill both Eleanor and Marianne, she feels so guilty to survive
alone. She doesn’t want to forgive herself, but Dr. Maria convinces her that the blame belongs to her
mother. Eleanor was only a child when the incident happened. Eleanor then decides to lose contact with
her mother. The last part is better day, which consists of only one chapter, chapter 45. In this chapter,
Eleanor is ready to find out the truth of her childhood and does the research about her mother. With the
help of Raymond, she decides to investigate the woman she calls mummy.

In my point of view, this novel is easy to read even for non-English speakers since it barely has
difficult words. The sentences are not too poetic, which makes it easier to get into the story. However,
there are many terms of American Latin that have no English translation in this novel, which is very
unfortunate. The humor in the novel lightens the dark situation of the character, makes it an additional
point for the story. The price of the novel itself is quite expensive, but maybe worth it for the one who
loves reading novels. All in all, I’ll give 8 out of 10 for this novel.
Review of Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination

Very Good Lives is a book written by JK Rowling, the writer of a popular fiction novel, Harry
Potter. Unlike Harry Potter, Very Good Lives is actually her commencement speech in Harvard University
in June 2008. It was first published as a book in March 2015 by Little Brown and Company. Published in a
form of hard cover, this book has 80 pages.

There are two topics brought in this book which are the fringe benefits of failure and the
importance of imagination. Even though his speech was aimed at the graduates, the messages conveyed
were still very acceptable to anyone. In the first topic, JK Rowling shares her rags to riches story in her
life. She talks about her ambition to become a novel writer. However, both of her parents took the view
that her overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage or
secure a pension. She doesn’t blame her parents for their point of view. She also couldn’t criticize her
parents for hoping that she would never experience poverty. Indeed poverty entails fear, and stress, and
sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. What she feared the most
back then wasn’t poverty but failure. The fear of failure might appears quite as much as a desire for
success. She tells that she was an example of an epic failure. She had an exceptionally short-lived
marriage, was jobless, being a lone parent, and was as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain
without being homeless. It doesn’t mean that failure is fun, failure means stripping away of the
inessential. The fear of failure serves as a solid foundation on which she rebuilt her life. Failure gave the
inner security that she had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught her things about
herself that she could have learned no other way. She discovered that she had a strong will and more
discipline than I had suspected; she also found out that she had friends whose value was truly above the
price of rubies. The second topic is the importance of imagination. JK Rowling said that Imagination is
not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all
invention and innovation; in its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power
that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared. Imagination itself
is the root of empathy. A person might understand others feeling without even being in their positions.
This is a power, like her brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to
manipulate or control just as much as to understand or sympathize. Many people also prefer not to
exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own
experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.

In my point of view, JK Rowling success bringing her messages through her commencement
speech. Publishing the book version of her speech is a good idea to attract the readers, besides her
name was already popular. Even though the price of this book is expensive, it is still worth to buy since it
contains JK Rowling’s rare journey of life as inspiration for everyone. This book can be read in only one
seat, yet it can be reread again to get the motivation in facing the life. This book has a very positive title
that suits the purpose of the book. It also has many illustrations and callygraphies regarding of her
contents, which makes the book is enjoyable to read. All in all, I would give 8,5 out of 10 for this book.