Tolog Review: Eleanor & Park

Eleanor & Park
by Rainbow Rowell
reviewed by Maria Luiso

Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park is a young adult novel that shows the complexity of teenage love and the impact of race and home life on young adults. Protagonists Eleanor Douglas and Park Sheridan are two complex characters who both struggle with their family life, body image, and self-worth. However, they physically could not be more different. Park is a Korean-American young man who just wants to remain unnoticed by the kids at his school. He wears black exclusively, listens to mixtapes, and struggles with his ethnicity and his feminine looks. Eleanor is a redheaded young woman who struggles with bullying about her body at her new school. She’s sarcastic, has a unique sense of style (scarves tied around her arms, men’s shirts with ties, oversize jeans), and, along with the rest of her family, suffers abuse from her stepfather, Richie. The meeting of the two plants a seed that blossoms into a relationship that make you laugh, cry, and realize how love is found in the most unlikely of places.

The novel, which is narrated jointly by Eleanor and Park, begins with a bus ride. Eleanor, the new girl, gets on the bus, and after not being able to find a seat, is told rather harshly by Park to sit down next to him. As time goes on, the two begin to talk during the rides to and from school. They quickly find that they enjoy each other’s company. Eleanor states that “they agreed on everything important and argued about everything else” (Rowell 64). Their relationship ends up growing into love, despite the challenges they face on the way. At first, the two rarely talk outside of the bus ride, because of Eleanor’s home situation. Even their conversations on the bus are observed by the other students, who make fun of the couple. But a phone call from the privacy Eleanor’s dad’s house reveals their true feelings for each other. As their love continues to grow, Park continues to challenge his identity, and Eleanor’s home situation continues to worsen. The book’s plot twist ending aches of harsh reality and the sacrifices we’ll make for the people we love.

Rowell handles the complexity of Eleanor and Park’s characters extremely well. Parks’ struggle with his identity relates to anyone who struggles with living up to their parent’s expectations or has felt guilty about the way that they think. Park grows up in a well off middle class family. His parents are deeply in love, his grandparents live next door, and he has anything he needs and more. But just because your economic and family circumstances are good does not mean life is perfect. As a short, skinny, slightly feminine guy, Park feels like a disappointment to his father, a tall, strong, capable man. He struggles with dealing with his family’s disapproval of Eleanor and his feelings that her father loves his brother more than he loves him. He feels guilty for judging Eleanor on her looks when he first meets her, and for caring about how Eleanor’s unpopularity rubs off on him. “There were moments,” Park states, “when Eleanor made him feel self-conscious, when he saw people talking and he was sure they were talking about them… and in those moments, [he] thought about pulling back from her.” (Rowell 91) Eleanor, on the other hand, struggles to survive in her terrible domestic situation. Her stepfather abuses her mother, and Eleanor and her siblings are left to fend for themselves. Eleanor’s self esteem is not helped by the fact that her stepfather constantly verbally abuses her and that her classmates make fun of her for her looks. Eleanor is deeply relatable to anyone who has felt self-conscious about their body and personality, and is a sympathetic figure to anyone who has lived in a household of domestic abuse.

Rowell’s use of metaphor and descriptive language gives the novel a tone that makes Eleanor and Park’s relationship seem like some form of art. From the way the two talk about each other [“Park is the sun,”(Rowell 302) Eleanor states] to the way Rowell uses small details to describe the setting of 1986 Nebraska (the cassette mixtapes Eleanor and Park create for each other, and the references to eighties pop culture throughout the book), the use of figurative language makes the book easily relatable and an excellent piece of literature.