You know you've hit on a good book when you go through mourning once it's over. That's precisely where I am right now. Eleanor and Park didn't end. It just stopped. The story is going on somewhere and I'm not there. And I miss them. I want to turn the page, but there is no page to turn. Yes, it's a little pathetic when you're invested so totally in a book that the characters have become so real to you, that once they're ripped out of your life you walk around feeling depressed and alone. Maybe there is something pathologically wrong with me. Maybe I need more human friends.
Eleanor and Park is set in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1980s. I'm not sure exactly why the author chose this decade, but I have a feeling that she's is fictionalizing some of her own life. Either way, it is a story of teenage puppy love in the old days - the days of walkmans, cassette tapes, landline phones, and a host of other things I only vaguely remember. The story's narration alternates between Eleanor and Park. Thus, the reader got a sense of how each character felt about the other, and how disillusioned they were about their own shortcomings.
The story is so peppered with sappy love scenes that I almost feel guilty about becoming so attached to it. Yet, what drew me in was not the romance, so much as the fact that it was a romance between two smart, dorky, somewhat naive, and very self-conscious kids. It also spoke a lot about attraction and it challenged our culture's stereotype of beauty. It gave me faith in humanity and it reaffirmed my belief that there really are good guys out there (besides my husband of course), guys who aren't attracted to Barbie dolls.
The story opens with Eleanor getting on the bus. She's the new girl. She has big red hair, a stocky build, and atrocious clothing. She looks like a loser in every sense of the word. Nobody wants to offer her a seat, but when the bus driver yells at her, a grouchy Asian kid reluctantly moves over and lets her sit down. Before they even get to school the kids in the back of the bus have invented a litany of unflattering nicknames for her. It doesn't get much better during the school day. She's smart, so she does well in her classes and gains respect and sympathy from her teachers, but she doesn't exactly make any friends among her peers. It's gym class that turns out to be the bane of her high school existence. The school bus bullies are in her gym class and they make her life a living hell. To make matters worse, she's forced to wear a revealing and too-tight gym suit that does nothing to flatter her full figure. Eleanor is miserable. She is the butt of all the jokes and she just wishes she could be invisible.
If school is bad, home is worse. The only time she can breathe easily is when her step-dad Richie is away at work or drinking his earnings at the local bar. She learns how to avoid him as much as possible; she also learns to sleep through the fights and the beatings going on in the next room. She tries, as best as a big redheaded teenager possibly can, to make herself invisible.
As you can imagine, Eleanor is very insecure, very reluctant to trust, very slow to let anyone in. Thus, the relationship between her and her seatmate develops slowly. The grouchy Asian kid, Park, actually feels bad for treating her so rudely on the first day, yet not bad enough to talk to her. He's in several of her honors classes, and he watches her closely. He begins to see that she is truly unique. Their relationship begins as they read comics together. At first, she surreptitiously reads over Park's shoulder, but he soon catches on. He lets her borrow some. Then he shares his music with her. It is not long before she's coming over to his house, meeting his family, and officially recognized as "Park's girlfriend."
Over the next few months their relationship grows from simple camaraderie to being "in love," to tentatively experimenting with physicality, and in the process dealing with their own insecurities. Eleanor thinks she fat. The bullies make fun of her for it and her step-dad makes rude comments about her appearance, but somehow Park sees none of this. He thinks her unruly hair and mismatched clothing makes her like "like art." Park however, thinks he's too effeminate, he believes that Asian men are not attractive to white girls. Both of them view themselves through the lens of what the cruelest voices in society have been telling them, yet both Eleanor and Park see the other as beautiful. Here's the best quote, this is the part where I absolutely came to adore Park:
“I miss you, Eleanor. I want to be with you all the time. You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met, and the funniest, and everything you do surprises me. And I wish I could say that those are the reasons I like you, because that would make me sound like a really evolved human being …‘But I think it’s got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft … and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake”
I love that these two off-beat kids are in love. I liked that the skinny, semi-emo Asian kid has the hots for a fat, sarcastic, redhead. They are an unconventional couple and that's why I appreciate them, which is also why I was so fond of this book. Eleanor's dysfunctional family added drama and a bit of suspense, and in the end led Park to make a very hard decision. I can't say I was always impressed with Eleanor's choices, but she was wholeheartedly endearing. I understood her and empathized with her.
This book has made it onto many bestseller lists, including NPR's "Best Books of 2013" (my #1 source for reading material). Dreamworks is making Eleanor and Park into a movie because, as Holly Bario, president of production, told Entertainment Magazine,
“Every girl who has read it says, ‘That was me in high school, or that was me in 7th grade...It reminded all of us of our own sort of awkwardness, or family dysfunction.”
When I read that quote I was incensed. That was ME in high school. It wasn't "every other girl;" every other girl was skinnier, prettier (or so I believed), and getting picked before me in gym class. I was always the last kid standing when other students chose teams, always the one without a partner, always the kid who got picked on or yelled at (or both) for doing the wrong thing with the ball. In fact, this book revived bullying memories as far back as kindergarten. I remember getting on the bus and finding there were no seats. I remember the "big kids" picking on me, and I remember standing in the aisle during the bus ride to school (fortunately I lived close, so it was quick). But gym class was truly the worst. For thirteen years I spent at least three hours a week feeling like the most worthless person in the world.
I'm thankful these experiences generally ended by 3:15. Unlike Eleanor, I don't know much about family dysfunction. I'm only an expert on social awkwardness. As a teacher, I totally gravitate toward the kids like Eleanor and Park. The clubs I sponsor all tend to attract the nerds. They are my people. I suppose the jocks all feel a little bit insecure too. But to say that Eleanor represents every girl really denigrates the experience of those of us who were legitimately bullied, who were legitimately overweight...and are legitimately redheaded. And no, I don't identify or empathize with Eleanor in every aspect. I had absolutely no family dysfunction, but those who did have a valid claim on her too. But please, Holly Bario, don't say that Eleanor represents every high school girl. She does not. Rainbow Rowell did not write this book to mirror the experiences of the popular kids. She wrote it for the outliers.
When Dreamworks makes this movie, I sure hope they don't cast Eleanor as some average-sized girl. I do hope that the actress is noticeably overweight and yet still beautiful (also, she must be a redhead, a real redhead). First, I don't want an average-sized actress because all too often these regular girls (like Mindy Kaling) go around calling themselves fat. I guess, compared to most Hollywood actresses they are larger, but Mindy is a size 8. A size 8 is a perfectly reasonable size, and one that many of us average women work very hard to fit into. By branding themselves as "fat" these actresses belittle those of us who are healthy, fit, and moderately curvy. Secondly, I hope Eleanor is overweight because I want beauty to be represented on-screen in all its forms. There are many beautiful people who are larger than a size 8. I'm not trying to promote an unhealthy lifestyle, but I believe we need to re-brand attractiveness. "Beauty" is not synonymous with "skinny." It is also not the only route to attraction. Oftentimes, one's intellect, humor, and personality makes them beautiful in the eyes of another, even if society doesn't see that. This is something that has taken me years to just begin to accept. It is a concept that Eleanor could not grasp, even as the book came to a close. However, I firmly believe that girls like Eleanor - and girls like me - need to see themselves as Park sees Eleanor. They need to see themselves as "art."
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