Elvira’s mother isn’t coming home and Elvira doesn’t know what to do. Mother always told her what to do and when to do it and took care of all the planning since Elvira is useless in society. But now that mother has had a stroke Elvira needs to care for both of them. So she creates the seven social rules to live by since people are the hardest thing for Elvira to understand.
If Don Tillman (The Rosie Project) was a young woman with an overwhelming overbearing mother you can begin to picture Elvira. She believes what people tell her: like all the stories her mother told about her father, that Elvira can’t take care of herself, that she will never be able to learn anything. But Elvira is beginning to think her mother may have been lying. Ellie (she likes her new nickname so much better) can learn computers and through the internet she learns that there are many people like her in the world. And since there are so many of them why do the Normal Typicals (there is actually a name for these people that seem to rule the world) not have to figure out how to interact with her? Why does she have to come up with so many rules to deal with them? Why oh why can’t people not use figures of speech?!
What starts as a story of a woman living a limited and sheltered life becomes a full blown coming of age story for 27-year old Ellie who is finally getting to take charge of who she wants to become. Told from her perspective her frustrations are ours as she shares her reasonings and confusions navigating the everyday which to her is a new adventure. While there is a lot of humor and the overall tone is light there are some serious and not so pleasant parts as well. I would recommend this book to fans of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time since Elvira is also trying to solve a mystery: the mystery surrounding her father.
