BOOK REVIEW 'Eleanor and Park'

Eleanor and Park

By: Rainbow Rowell

This pick comes to you straight off of my “to read, but lack the funds to buy the book and excessive holds at the library caused extreme delays” list. All problems resolved, the book has been in my possession for the past two weeks and I’ve been in love for a week and a half of that time.

I now present to you, Park, a not exactly high school outsider, but just about as far out from the center as you can get on the spectrum of popularity without crossing the boundary into a bullied nobody. He has being unnoticed pretty much down to a science until one day Eleanor shows up and threatens to ruin that all. It’s almost as if she is trying to draw attention to herself with her big, curly, bright red hair, and a wardrobe of ill-fitting men’s shirts and excessive jewelry. From the moment she steps onto the bus on her first day at his school she is tormented by everyone who sees her. Park is the only one willing to let her sit by him on the bus no matter how much he wishes she wouldn’t. What starts out as neither of them even looking at each other, slowly develops into a friendship bonded over shared Comic Books. Their friendship escalades into them bonding over more valuable items and the two begin to have feelings for each other. The result is a love story between two unlikely individuals.

One thing Rainbow Rowell did fantastically in this book is she so perfectly flawed her characters. Every single character has their faults and those faults are there with purpose and you can completely see what part of their experiences they are rooted in (with the exception of one who is just a plain horrible human being). Eleanor has a hard time trusting people because she has an absentee dad, an abusive step-father and a worn out mother who has stopped trying to do anything but keep her step-father happy. Park is a bit clingy because he is trying to hold onto something that his father won’t tell him he is doing wrong. The way the characters act so spot on reflects where they come from and what they’ve been through that no matter how much sometimes you wish they wouldn’t do what they did, it still makes sense in the context. They’re not flawed in the sense that they’re constantly self-loathing and blaming themselves for everything going wrong around them. It’s in the idea that they are reacting to what happens to them in the best way that they can, be it the most logical or not, but it’s what they are comfortable with based on what they have been through. Honestly, if someone we’re to ask me to give an example on how to likeably flaw a character, my first thought would be Eleanor and Park.

The book overall has this sense of reality that allows you to really connect with the characters. When her drunk stepdad goes on rampages and Eleanor doesn’t know what else to do but hide herself and her siblings in their shared room you wish you were there to do something to stop it. Your heart aches for the things that the two of them are growing up with. Maybe its partially their flaws that make them so easy to relate to. They are not perfect human beings and they come from two completely different backgrounds and home lives but there is something about each one of them that you can connect yourself to, no matter your situation.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone, of any age or background, who is looking for a little bit of an unconventional love story.

Pages: 328

Read In: 10 days

Rating: 8/10

Ages: 14+ up

Four Categories: Romance, High School Problems