What I’m Reading: Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell

A lot has been written about this excellent novel, and there’s not much that I can add, but it’s so good, I feel compelled to try. If you haven’t heard of Eleanor and Park, know that it’s the story of a romance between a Korean-American boy (and New Wave/Punk/Alternative fan) named Park and a wonderfully independent and intelligent girl named Eleanor.

One of the things I like best about this YA novel is Rowell’s subtle yet compelling chronicle of Eleanor and Park’s relationship. While “star-crossed” might accurately describe their love, the romance depicted here feels absolutely genuine, and is built from a myriad of small gestures and kindnesses and reversals and reorientations that almost always ring true. The protagonists’ love for each other hardly defines their characters, and yet it does reveal them, and the reader reaches the end of the novel convinced that this young man and woman are at once on their way to being fully-fledged humans—and admirable humans at that—and also convinced that they have found their soulmates. As a result, the threats to their relationship (which stem largely from Eleanor’s dysfunctional family) keep the reader in honest suspense. And the heroes’ resilience in the face of those threats give the reader a pleasure rarely matched outside the pages of a Jane Austen novel (especially not in Romeo and Juliet, which Rowell slights entertainingly with a few sly references). What can I say? I highly recommend this book.