Audio Book Review: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
My daughters got this young adult novel, Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell for Christmas and they say it's pretty good. One day, while browsing through the Los Angeles Public Library's e-media catalog on line looking for audiobooks to listen to, I came across this book on audio and decided to give it a listen. I figured I that I can dig young adult novels since I've always liked J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In the Rye, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, and of course To Kill and Mockingbird by Harper Lee. These coming of age books are inspiring, funny, and at the same time insightful comments about certain social mores.
Eleanor and Park expounds on the sentiments of first love, comic books, the trials of being part of a dysfunctional and broken family, and being bullied in school. The story is about Eleanor, a new girl in school who is slightly chubby. She is relentlessly teased by some mean girls, but somehow, Park Sheridan, a half Asian/ half Irish American boy befriends her and bonds over reading comic books on the bus, listening to the Smiths and Beatles, and experiencing the joy and excitement of falling in love for the first time. Things don't end smoothly because Eleanor's mother is married to a controlling and abusive husband, and Eleanor ends up running away from home.
I find the book a bit one note on the teenage first love experience and I can't find a theme that an adult such as myself can latch onto: Park is unrelentingly good and understanding and has a very healthy relationship with his parents, and everything about Eleanor and her family is flawed. Somehow, they love each other with no reservations, just like Romeo and Juliet, a play the teenagers are studying in English class.
The premise of the love story between a white girl and an Asian American boy is interesting. There is no over wrought expounding on the Asian American experience, no overt discussions of racism (as topics about Asian American has become these days), and no implication of the Asian Americans' outsider status. The handling of the love story is sensitive and believable, and the interracial relationship seems to be normal and unexceptionally accepted.
My daughters tells me that some Hollywood studio is going to make a movie of this book.
Now, I wonder whether an Asian American will play the main character, or will studios white wash the story into something else?
Overall: A good young adult read that crosses racial barriers.
I think I'll read a John Green novel next. My daughters rave about him.
Eleanor and Park expounds on the sentiments of first love, comic books, the trials of being part of a dysfunctional and broken family, and being bullied in school. The story is about Eleanor, a new girl in school who is slightly chubby. She is relentlessly teased by some mean girls, but somehow, Park Sheridan, a half Asian/ half Irish American boy befriends her and bonds over reading comic books on the bus, listening to the Smiths and Beatles, and experiencing the joy and excitement of falling in love for the first time. Things don't end smoothly because Eleanor's mother is married to a controlling and abusive husband, and Eleanor ends up running away from home.
I find the book a bit one note on the teenage first love experience and I can't find a theme that an adult such as myself can latch onto: Park is unrelentingly good and understanding and has a very healthy relationship with his parents, and everything about Eleanor and her family is flawed. Somehow, they love each other with no reservations, just like Romeo and Juliet, a play the teenagers are studying in English class.
The premise of the love story between a white girl and an Asian American boy is interesting. There is no over wrought expounding on the Asian American experience, no overt discussions of racism (as topics about Asian American has become these days), and no implication of the Asian Americans' outsider status. The handling of the love story is sensitive and believable, and the interracial relationship seems to be normal and unexceptionally accepted.
My daughters tells me that some Hollywood studio is going to make a movie of this book.
Now, I wonder whether an Asian American will play the main character, or will studios white wash the story into something else?
Overall: A good young adult read that crosses racial barriers.
I think I'll read a John Green novel next. My daughters rave about him.
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