Park Sheridan and Eleanor Douglas are two misfit teenagers living in Omaha, Nebraska in 1986. Park is half-American, half-Korean while Eleanor is Danish and Scottish. Dealing with issues of race and abuse, the book tells the story of their love after the two bond over comic books and music on the school bus, the obstacles they face being in love, and how they ultimately change because of it.
This is cutting kind of close, but it's still a few minutes until the end of Wednesday. ;) I've been reading some mild to moderate praise for Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, but it was love story Eleanor & Park that caught my eye. Perhaps it's because slugging through a months-long breakup is taking its toll and by nature I am inclined to immerse myself in bothersome thoughts and get sadder and sadder until one day suddenly it feels as if I've finally come up for air and all feels good, nearly all-right. ANYWAY.
The honesty in this story is almost palpable: from the hesitation to get involved, to the shy little things almost-couples do (little things like mix tapes and the first time you hold hands and that habit of touching his chest), to the evolution of intimacy, and the final non-goodbye. Maybe it's because training in medicine means you never really leave an academic setting until you're 30 and everything after college feels just like high school, maybe it's because the world of interns and residents is so busy and so small that everyone notices every little thing and people live on caffeine and gossip, maybe day after day of trudging through improvement and cure but also death and disability makes it that much better when you have someone to come home to -- but this resonates with me to an almost uncomfortable degree. These kids crash land into each other's lives and they (especially Eleanor) know it's probably not going to last, but they try anyway.
In the blurb Park and Eleanor are described as "misfits;" even John Green sees it as a "two against the world" situation. The backdrop of racism and domestic abuse does lend tension to the plot, but I see it as a love story even without those elements. It's a quirky and heartfelt boy-meets-girl that touches all the right spots.
It's also amusing how relevant the pop culture references are to my generation. From The Smiths (recently re-popularized by the 2009 film (500) Days of Summer) to Watchmen (!!!) (once again plunged into the spotlight when the Before Watchmen prequels were collected into hardcovers last year) and of course The Beatles, who are timeless.
The mark of a hit young adult novel is fanart, and this has an abundance. You may even have seen this quote floating around social media -- I actually saw it on Facebook before reading the novel.
She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
It's those throwaway lines that gut you.
A movie is also in the works, which I am sort of dreading because with stories like these the films never seem to convey the inner monolog of the characters, but I could possibly see it in the style of the aforementioned (500) Days which, as you may have guessed by now, I quite enjoyed.