Book Review: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor & Park Summary

Eleanor is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and unruly red hair, she couldn’t stick out more if she tried.

Park is the boy at the back of the bus. Black T-shirts, headphones, head in a book – he thinks he’s made himself invisible. But not to Eleanor… never to Eleanor.

Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mixtapes, Eleanor and Park fall for each other. They fall in love the way you do the first time when you’re young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose.

Eleanor And Park Review

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell centres on two teenagers in the 80s, one half-Korean boy who lives a fairly cushy life, and a slightly overweight girl living with her highly dysfunctional family in a small and run-down home with little money.

These two do not seem like the type to get along, but a gradual relationship develops between the two as they sit together on the bus each morning. There isn’t a trace of insta-love in this novel and the relationship between Eleanor and Park develops very slowly but you savour each and every moment.

“He made her feel like more than the sum of her parts.”

Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

I think what’s great about this book is that it isn’t your typical high school romance. This isn’t a story about “opposites attract”, but rather the interesting development of a relationship between two very different characters that somehow complement each other.

These characters are not perfect, they are flawed individually and as a couple. They argue a lot and sometimes both Eleanor and Park really annoyed me (REALLY annoyed me), but I liked this about the Eleanor & Park book because it made the characters seem more real and alive.

Eleanor & Park doesn’t come across as sappy in the slightest. In places where it could be, a character acknowledges the sappiness of the situation, which again, makes these characters seem real. They are definitely not characters living in a world of make-believe!

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Eleanor’s difficult home life keeps this story grounded as she comes from a difficult background. She has a large family and is often picked on at school but her attitude towards these things seems very human.

She is sometimes brave, but not always. She is sometimes selfish but recognises this. She is incredibly self-aware though and acknowledges that guilt doesn’t make her feel any different. There is just something so raw and truthful about everything that goes through these two teenagers’ minds.

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor and Park

What I found rather strange (and hard to get my head around at first) was the fact that the Eleanor and Park book is written in a dual narrative but in the third person. This was a fascinating way of getting right into Eleanor and Park’s heads, but also giving the reader enough distance so that there was an air of mystery around what each character was thinking at every second.

It was especially fascinating reading the different POVs of these two characters as they are wildly different, and yet at one. You can see that there are vast differences in the way that these characters think and feel and it’s sort of like the reader is keeping secrets for both Eleanor and Park, which you cannot reveal to the other person.

I was rather touched by this novel on a personal level even though I can’t really relate to any of the content, simply because the narrative is so full of real emotions which seem truthful and heartfelt.

That said, I don’t think I was quite as enamoured by this book as the rest of its readers. Sure, Eleanor & Park is a fantastic novel and it is simultaneously cute and heartbreaking but I wouldn’t peg it as a five-star read as many before me have. I think the thing that bothered me the most about this book is the lack of plot. Although this was a very nice snippet from the teenage years of Eleanor and Park, I felt that perhaps this snippet was directionless and didn’t really have a plot that built up.

“Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”

Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

This book follows the relationship between Eleanor and Park from the very beginning, but everything is a bit up in the air at the end. Whilst this uncertain ending may appeal to some, for me, it just seemed like the story was missing another chapter. This story is much more about the thoughts and feelings of these two characters and not on any sort of event that happens in either one of their lives.

All in all, Eleanor & Park is a great novel, though perhaps a little more style than substance. The writing is superb and highly addictive so you will no doubt be drawn in and unable to put this book down. However, don’t bother waiting for some sort of major event to ‘happen’ because it’s not going to. That’s probably the only downside to this book as it really is very well-written and a pleasure to read.

Eleanor & Park is available on:
Amazon

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