Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Because you never forget your first love.

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.  

Park is the only Korean boy (as far as he knows) in the entire of Omaha. He skates just on the edge of freakdom by an unexpected friendship (sort of) with the captain of the football team. Eleanor just doesn’t fit in – she’s big, red-headed, ungainly and lives in a house of horrors with her mother, feral stepfather and three siblings. Banished from home for a year because her stepfather can’t stand her, she’s come home and started at a new school. No-one talks to her, the mean girls steal her clothes during gym and flush them down the toilet and no-one wants to let her sit next to them on the bus..until Park relents and moves over by the window to let her sit down. In the course of the school year, they slowly discover a mutual love for comic books and music – and eventually, each other.  

Park’s family are absolutely set against Eleanor, she’s just not what his petite, plain-speaking Korean mother wants for her eldest son. Eleanor just can’t tell her family anything about it. Her stepfather rules with a rod (and fists) of iron and Eleanor knows that if he finds out that anyone is doing anything nice for her, he’s likely to beat her or worse – send her away again.  

This is a great story. It recreates the mid-80s perfectly, with the music, movies, fashion and language and paints a very, very realistic and engaging story about two unlikely lovers and the way that teenage love is sometimes all you need – but is sometimes also just more than you can cope with.

 

Di