Eleanor And Park

 Author- Rainbow Rowell

Protagonist(s)- Eleanor and Park (Can it not be more obvious than this)

Number of pages- 325

Let’s get started-

Eleanor is the new girl in town, and with her chaotic family life, her mismatched clothes and her unruly 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.

Her stepdad doesn’t help in this at all. He’s this drunken old hunk who sits around watching T.V, and shouting at poor Eleanor. Neither does Park’s mom. She despises Eleanor. But well, everything’s gonna change for the best.

Can you fall in love through some comic books? Or music? Why, of course you can! And that’s what happens in this book. That’s what it’s all about.

And on and on and on goes the story. I must say, it was actually pretty good, and sad, and fun, and crazy and there are many other words to describe this utterly strange-in-a-good-way book, but my vocabulary is limited to the words that I know and have read somewhere or the other. Easy to understand and a good plot. But then again, after reading The Fault In Our Stars, my expectations of books like these have hit a certain point where everything and I mean EVERYTHING has to be perfect (not in the Mary Sue perfect kinda way, that’s sick. And TFiOS is not about perfectness. It’s about naturalness, and tradegy. But it’s perfect in its own not-so-perfect way).

Reading the book, I actually felt what I was reading. Feeling what you’re reading is not like, “Oh, yeah, this happens. Oh, look she died. Ah, sad sad sad.” No. Knowing what you’re reading is this: “No. NO THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. NOO SHE CANNOT DIE! I’M GONNA GO CRY IN THE BATHROOM FOR WEEKS NOW! WHY, WHY, WHYYY?”

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Excerpt-

‘I’m sorry I look stupid today,’ she said.

‘You look like you always do,’ he said. Her bag was hanging at the end of her arm. He tried to take it, but she pulled away.

‘I always look stupid?’

‘That’s not what I meant…’

 

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And that’s what happens to guys in reality when they try to make a girl feel special. There’s so much that one girl (and of course, one guy) can relate to in this book. We obviously may have read many, many, MANY romance novels ‘till date, but this is different. This is the ‘real deal’.

It’s pretty impossible to put all of the book’s doings in a limited amount of words, but let me tell you this: You need to buy this, because then, and only then, will you know what young love truly is. It’s not about two perfect people growing up together with their perfectness. It’s about something else. And it’s not always that they grow up together.

Of course I didn’t cry, whilst reading this book. But you get the idea. And no, this book doesn’t make you cry. You feel this warm glow inside of you when you finish this book. It’s like, even though Eleanor’s life is now broken into a million pieces, she’ll be able to pick them up and put them back together, in such a way that they won’t break up all over again. It’s like that. And Park will help her.

Just one spoiler- It’s Eleanor’s stepdad who writes all that stuff down, Mr. Unobservant (yes, you).

Brownie points- 4.5 out of 5 brownies. Just ‘cause I said that you feel a warm glow inside of you, and that I thoroughly enjoyed the read, doesn’t mean it gets all the brownies. There are not so good parts in this thing, too. Of all the obvious not so good parts, one is the not-so-perfectness. Ah, you’ll understand, you’ll understand.

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