Redheaded Reviews: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor joins the school year late because she has spent the past year at a friend of her mother's house because her stepdad hates her and kicked her out. She has younger siblings: a sister and three brothers. They all live in a small house that belongs to Ritchie, her stepdad. There isn't even a door on the bathroom and all the kids share a bedroom with one set of bunk beds. Park on the other hand lives in suburbialand with his own room with a waterbed and his own phone (Eleanor's family doesn't have a phone because Ritchie can't afford to pay the bill. He drinks it away.) and has a younger brother and his parents are still together and love each other very much. Park's life isn't perfect, though, he has a dad who is tough on him and makes him too nervous to get things right when he is teaching him whether it is a new taekwondo move or to drive stick which he insists on him learning before he can get his driving license.

Eleanor arrives on the bus in all her weird glory in 1986 and finds no seat to sit on the bus. Park lets her sit with him, reluctantly. He's not all that interested in getting picked on for allowing this and he walks on thin ground with the popular kids in the back of the bus as it is for being into punk music, comic books, and is half Korean. But soon a friendship forms over comic books as she reads along with him on the way to school. And he makes her a mixtape of the Smiths and Joy Division for her to listen to because she's never heard them before since they aren't played on the local radio station. He even keeps her in batteries as he makes her more mixed tapes and loans her his comic book collection.

But she knows that the love they are starting to feel for one another can't last because if Ritchie or her mom find out that she really isn't going to her friend Tina's after school but to Park's house they would kick her out of the house again. But that doesn't stop her from going. Neither does the fact that Park's mom doesn't like her because she dresses and looks weird and she knows who her parents are. On top of that Eleanor must deal with being bullied by Tina and her crowd during gym. But she gets some unexpected support from two girls who decide to be her friend.

This book brought back memories of my own time riding on the bus to school during this same time period of the eighties. I had a big french horn to keep me company on my seat and to encourage others to sit elsewhere. I didn't have my own romance like Eleanor and Park, but I was always the odd man out at school like Eleanor was. The only difference was I wasn't bullied much because I was in the band which provided me some protection. This book is so relatable and believable and you root for them to last against the odds. This book is more than about first love. It's about fitting in where you don't and finding that one person that makes you complete. This is a great book and I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

That’s a voice that arrives on a chariot drawn by dragons.

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p 15)

Brains love poetry. It’s sticky stuff.

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p22)

Eleanor was right: She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p 165)

“Never trust a man, Eleanor!” “Especially if he hates to dance.”

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p 205)

The Impala might not look pervy on the outside, not like a fully carpteted custom van or something—but the inside was a different story. The front seat was almost as big as Eleanor’s bed, and the backseat was an Erica Jong novel just waiting to happen.

-Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor and Park p 273)