Book of the Week: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Title: Eleanor & Park

Author: Rainbow Rowell

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Year Published: 2013

Format: Hardcover (328 pages)
Goodreads rating: 4.15

Jacket copy:

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.

Taking place in Omaha, Nebraska in 1986, Eleanor Douglas has just moved and returned home after being kicked out by her step-dad the year before. She is described as a chubby, oddly dressed and plain redhead. Eleanor is the new girl in school. The first day of school she gets on the bus, no one is welcoming or offering her a seat. Even they call her 'big red'. The only seat available is the one next to Park, who is --somewhat grudgingly and possibly pity-- forced to share his seat. Park Sheridan, is half-Korean (Irish dad, Korean mom) who is always dressed in black with headphones in his ears and a comic book in hand. For a long time, they don't talk. After many weeks of sitting side by side in awkward silence everyday, one day Park notices Eleanor reading his comic books over his shoulder. He starts lending them to her and she stays up all night, reading them. Overtime, they bond over comic books and music, and their relationship begin to grow.

***

Eleanor & Park is the first young adult novel by Rainbow Rowell published in 2013. I'd always heard about this book and finally took the time to read it. This is my first Rainbow Rowell book, so I didn't know what to expect. Set in the author's hometown in 1986, Eleanor & Park is told from an alternating, third-person narrator point of view which reminds me of one of my favorite novels, Flipped.

This book.. where to start. First things first, I can't believe that I finished it. This one took forever to read, almost two months. Eleanor & Park is one of the worst reading experiences I've ever had. So, here we have Eleanor and Park who are not like your typical young adult romantic interests. Just two regular kids who have never really been in love before. Eleanor and Park seems likable at the beginning, but as it goes on I keep on thinking 'Why do you even like Eleanor, Park? Why? Why??'

Eleanor is simply rude and effing annoying. She has issues with her insecurities, yet never overcame them. She is always mad at Park about something, I mean he is so nice to her.. what's wrong with you, Eleanor? She doesn't seem to love Park as much as he loves her and it is not explained why.

And Park. The first thing that comes across my mind is 'Isn't Park a Korean surname?' But in this book, Park is his first name. Why would a Korean mother name her child a surname? I don't get it. Well, I liked Park at first, really I thought he was cute until he blamed his Asian genes for screwing everything up and insecure about his Korean heritage.

I just don't connect with them or any of the side characters at all. There is no character development. Eleanor's family, ugh I don't even have words for. Glad that Park has a relatively normal family, as far as I could remember.

The love story between Eleanor and Park is.....meh. It's not bad, no, may be just not my cup of tea. I understand that teens fall in love quickly, but saying "I love you" after just a short time of hardly being friends? Insta-love! Keep in mind they never say a word or even look at each other the whole time. They even barely acknowledge each other. For me, their whole relationship is weird. It turns out to be more like an unhealthy obsession over one another. There are so many cheesy lines that make me outright cringe and roll my eyes at their stupidity.

At one point, this is what Park feels when he holds Eleanor's hand for the first time:

‘Was it possible to rape somebody's hand?’

Of course. Nothing is impossible, Park.

And Eleanor's:

‘It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys’.

“I don't think I even breathe when we're not together," she whispered. "Which means, when I see you on Monday morning, it's been like sixty hours since I've taken a breath.”

“And because I’m so out of control, I can’t help myself. I’m not even mine anymore, I’m yours, and what if you decide that you don’t want me? How could you want me like I want you?”

“And you make me feel like a cannibal.” “You're crazy.”

‘Maybe Park had paralyzed her with his ninja magic, his Vulcan handhold, and now he was going to eat her. That would be awesome’.

‘Don't bite his face, Eleanor told herself. It's disturbing and needy and never happens in situation comedies or movies that end with big kisses’.

Yup. Eating each other's faces.

‘That’s how good it felt. She was like one of those dogs who’ve tasted human blood and can’t stop biting. A walrus who’s tasted human blood’. 

I also can't stand the fact that there are a lot of casual racism and creepy fetishizing moments in this book. Eleanor mentions it so often that it seems she's fetishizing Park's half-Asian heritage. She keeps talking about Park's magical eyes and his light “honey-colored” skin, that he is too perfect in every sense. All their love is literally a fetish. Park is also labeled under the Asian stereotypes as the emasculated Asian man, good at math and does taekwando (for heaven's sake the author misspells taekwondo for 14 times). While Park's mom is stereotyped as tiny, petite, skinny, and speaks poor English with an accent as well.

Park's eyes got wide. well, sort of wide. Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time.

No shit yes, it is.

The third person point of view from two characters' perspectives is so puzzling. It changes so quickly and makes me confused. I'm getting tired of "he said" and "she said" that are so overused here. The plot is thin, underdeveloped and borrring. It makes no sense. The connections between characters, plot-lines, and settings all seem pointless. Moreover, it has a lot of swear words although it gets less and less as the story goes on. Yuck, I don't get offended by swearing, I actually prefer it. I get that teenagers swear, but the use of those words in the first three pages is way over done.

The ending, however, leaves me feeling unfulfilled, ~sigh~ probably because that is the way a good novel should end. It doesn't move forward at all until the very end. The situation remains unresolved for readers. I don't even care about those ‘three words’ tho.

For all the hype this book received, I'm rather disappointed. Ew, this book doesn't even have deeper meaning. It feels way too cheesy and cliché for me. Maybe I'm too old for this sort of books or it's just not my kind of thing I guess. Just don't waste your time, especially if you're over 20.

All in all, this serves one star for me. I feel like I am being harsh, but this is only my opinion. I would recommend this book to no one, not even for curiosity's sake. Just no.