Set over the course of one school year in 1986, ELEANOR AND PARK is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under.
This book was a lot heavier than I was expecting but I also think it's an important one. Yes, it's about the beauty of first love and the sweet awkwardness of navigating a new relationship and I'll get to that in a second. But it's also about the victims of abuse and poverty. Park's family situation is loving and secure enough that he has the mental energy to spend a lot of time thinking happily of Eleanor. He can admit to being in love. Then we switch to Eleanor's point of view and she may be thinking about Park OR she may be carefully navigating family politics, trying to protect her siblings from their stepfather, or walking 40 minutes in the dead of winter o the store with her mother because they don't have a car. Park becomes her escape but then she can't trust the situation or any of the feelings involved because she knows how fleeting happiness can be. When you grow up with that kind of instability you come to expect it. Even create it. At the end of the book Eleanor has all but torpedoed her relationship with Park (though it does end on a hopeful note and Rowell has hinted that she may revisit the characters in another book). I know a lot of people disliked the ending since it wasn't hearts and rainbows but I loved it. I feel like Eleanor did the best she could with her situation.
While there is heavier stuff here, there's also a wonderfully sweet romance. It brought back some long buried memories and left me grinning like an idiot. Rowell obviously remembers what it was like to be a teenager and she captures it really well. Although, I do call shenanigans on Park's thoughts. No 16-year-old boy is that poetically romantic.
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