Mind bendingly weird book

Eleanor Oliphaunt
is completely fine
by Gayle Honeyman

Wow oh wow. I very much wanted to stop listening to this. I was taking it very literally ,and in the beginning, Eleanor Oliphaunt is very literally a highly disfunctional social disaster. Yes, I suspected she had some reasons for being so strange but I didn't think I'd ever find out what they were. She was simply this really odd, really unhappy person drudging on and on...and then she slipped into a world of fantasy.

I think I can tell you this without giving up too much of the plot...she seems to be an ordinary-looking, 30-ish something woman who doesn't have any interesting hobbies. But one day she sees a musician at a concert and decides that she is the woman of his dreams...and he the man of hers. So she starts preparations for their eventual meeting, the inevitable falling in love, and the happy cohabitation for ever after.

Luckily these preparations, combined with an accidental meeting with a coworker followed by their having to call an ambulance for a man who passed out at a bus stop, brought her kicking and screaming right up against the world of reality.

For long-suffering me, after enduring page after page (in audio) of mildly irritating descriptions of her fantasy life, suddenly I really wanted to know how it ended.  And I was not disappointed.