Eleanor - A Review of ELEANOR & PARK by Rainbow Rowell

Title: Eleanor & Park
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Published: February 26th 2013 by
St. Martin's Press
Source: My Bookshelf

Two misfits.
One extraordinary love.

Eleanor... Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough...Eleanor.

Park... He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes her want to keep promises...Park.

Set over the course of one school year, this is the story of two star-crossed sixteen-year-olds—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

Rainbow Rowell writes books. Sometimes she writes about adults (ATTACHMENTS and LANDLINE). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (ELEANOR & PARK and FANGIRL). But she always writes about people who talk a lot. And people who feel like they're screwing up. And people who fall in love.

When she's not writing, Rainbow is reading comic books, planning Disney World trips and arguing about things that don't really matter in the big scheme of things.

She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons.

First of all I have to say that I am the "big" girl with crazy red hair who married the half-Korean boy who never quite fit in. I like to say that the characters were based on myself and my husband.  Anyway, on to the story.

I'm sitting here wondering how a girl like me, a total HEA kind of gal, can read this book and the only word that comes to mind is PERFECTION. The writing style is flawless. The characters are more authentic than any I've ever read. The emotions are almost physical in their nature. This book is just fabulous. 

Park's mom is written with a frightening degree of accuracy. She is the embodiment of my Korean mother-in-law, if Lee were an Avon sales lady from the 1980's. 

Park is the unequaled in the world of fiction. He has a sharp dislike for Eleanor at first and has a tendency to be outright rude to her. As we learn more about Park, we see that his initial reaction to Eleanor is a direct result to being half Asian in a predominately white environment. He didn't understand why she would dress in a way that makes her stand out, a complaint he ponders often in the beginning. To someone who has spent his life trying to fit in, her choices are a mystery. As the story moves forward, Park begins to accept and eventually love these very qualities about Eleanor. It is these seemingly outrageous decisions that cause him to tell her that she's the bravest person that he knows.

And Eleanor...God bless Eleanor in all of her Big Red crazy-haired glory. It is through Eleanor's character and Park's reactions to her that I was able to think back to the early days of dating my husband and see what it is that he was able to see in me.

This story is beautifully and sometimes brutally written. I love that the author leaves the ending open.  She brings us right to the door of hope.  All you have to do, as the reader, is choose what kind of ending you want for Eleanor & Park.