Gail Honeyman: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

As I’d told Raymond, Mummy has lived in Mumbai, Tashkent, São Paulo and Taipei.

She told me how she’d eaten chilli-fried tofu in the night markets of Kowloon, and that the best sushi outside of Japan could be found in São Paulo.

Or . . . what was the other thing? Working as a blackjack dealer in Macau?

The pale wood is unvarnished, and there is a faded stamp bearing the imprint ‚Made in Taiwan‘.

The crockery was old but good quality, painted with blows roses and edged in faded gilt. Mrs Gibbons saw me looking at it. There was certainly nothing wrong with her powers of observation.
‚That was my wedding China, Eleanor,‘ she said. ‚Imagine – still going strong almost fifty years later!‘
‚You, or the China?‘ Raymond said, and she tutted and shock her head, smiling.

Gail Honeyman: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (2017), HarperCollins
Bild: Lanhydrock, 2019