Rather, any love you claim to feel is directed toward the idea of that person, to an illusion you’ve built up in your mind. It seems to me that if you don’t know someone, you can’t truly love them.

At the same time, however, both characters constantly bemoan how little they know they other. Finally, they have a conversation longer than two sentences, and within two chapters Park proclaims his love for Eleanor. They spend the next several weeks not talking at all, until Park lets Eleanor borrow one of his comic books then for a few weeks they read comic books together on the bus, but still don’t talk. The two main characters are thrown together when new-girl Eleanor is forced to sit next to Park on the school bus. There was no growth there.Īdditionally, the supposed romance in Eleanor & Park failed to work for me. Eleanor would get close to Park, then she would freak out and push him away, then they would make up. Eleanor spends much of the novel overreacting in response to Park’s attempts to make friends and dealing with violent and confusing mood swings. Rowell presents her as a standoffish overweight redhead with obvious underlying issues. Likewise, I failed to see growth in Eleanor. It would have been nice to see him learn to accept himself more, and move past insecurities. Instead, Park never got past the stage where he hated himself for being short and “girly” compared to his white father. This would be an excellent opportunity to explore the conflict and difficulty associated with having a different racial identity than the majority, but it was not used to its full potential. Park, as a half-Korean in the 1980’s Midwest, stands out.

Looking deeper, I was unsettled by both Eleanor and Park, though especially the former. All in all, I felt that certain aspects of the book didn’t match up with other aspects, and that was the first step to the unbalancing experience that was this novel. This is in part because the romance between the titular characters was not in any way believable, and also due to the nearly ostentatious style of the depiction of Eleanor’s home life. Combining those two elements is a difficult task, and I don’t think Rainbow Rowell succeeded.

On the surface, this book is one part teenage romance and one part discussion of screwed up families.

Eleanor and park full book