“But he’s so obviously making fun of them,” she said. She was wearing tow or three necklaces, old fake pearls, like Park’s grandmother wore to church,and she twisted them while she talked. Early in the novel, which is classified as Young Adult by the way (despite the many adult book clubs reading it), Eleanor and Park‘s English class reads Romeo & Juliet. and a face shaped like a box of chocolates.” As the school year progresses, Park finds himself magnetically drawn to the girl in the weird clothes who makes the intelligent comments in English class. Park, a cool kid with a Korean mom and a former American service man dad who are still deeply in love, finds himself stuck with sitting next to her on the school bus simply because he is the only one not cruel enough to turn her away.

This is 1986, when vintage clothes were strange and young ladies had to wear those horrible (HORRIBLE!) one-piece polyester unitards for gym class. Eleanor, the new girl in school, is too beautiful and mature to be accepted by anyone so she is shunned. A love that age and experience (and past hurts and regrets) just won’t allow you to feel.Ī relationship like the one shared by Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell’s fictional misfit lovers. And we (my first love and I) would forever share the tender, open, honest relationship that no one ever has after that first broken heart. If I did that, she assured me, I would miss the worst pain of heartbreak that comes from tearing yourself away from your first love. Someone once told me that I should marry my first love.

Eleanor and park book 2