Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

 

So #funfact: FANGIRL is one of my least favorite YA books of all time, to the point where I almost felt like I needed to sign up for anger management classes after reading that book, because of how much it pissed me off. After finishing it, I was like, I'm not subjecting myself-- or the author-- to this, ever, ever again. No more Rainbow Rowell for me. And then this book showed up for twenty-five cents at a library book sale and I was like *puts on clown makeup*. ...UNTIL NOW.

This was actually on my radar well before I'd even heard of or picked up FANGIRL. I'm a sucker for 80s nostalgia porn, and I was really curious to see how this book handled interracial dating and biracial characters. Based on what I've seen from #OwnVoices reviewers who got their hands on this book, the answer to that is, uh, not reassuring. It's definitely a dated book, and it kind of puts itself into a tight spot, in a way, because the 80s were totally un-PC. People said and did all kinds of problematic shit out in the open, which they still do, but back then, the status quo was basically, "Ain't nothing wrong with that! Let's keep doing this!"

You see the same thing with 50s nostalgia porn, actually. Because on the one hand, people are like "Elvis! Poodle skirts! Rock n' roll!" But then on the other hand, there was also segregation and women were literally not allowed to wear pants, and being fine with sexual harassment was basically something you had to put on your resume to get hired, so whenever you read a book like this, where it's like a hyper-idealized sort of retrospective of a specific time period, there's this little Jiminy Cricket voice whispering, "You know this isn't right, and by liking this, you are basically admitting to your own privilege because you can selectively step back from the conversation and just 'look past it.'"

To her credit, Rowell tries to kind of add an air of realism to the book, but she does it in some very weird, pick and choose-y kinds of ways. Like using the R-word (which people did use, even in the 90s), or having people make weird jokes about Park being able to do karate, or having the heroine refer to his mother as a china doll, or call Park the "stupid Asian kid" multiple times. But then on the other hand, Eleanor has two black best friends who at times seem to speak with a blaccent (or what the author thinks is one), but then at other times, they're just generic besties who could be anyone. And I get that code-switching is a thing, but at the same time, their inclusion felt very awkwardly handled-- and they don't seem to face any racism at all, and nobody makes any comments about their Blackness, whereas Park's Asianness is commented on by basically just about anyone, especially by Eleanor.

Eleanor also has a super abusive and predatory stepdad and the way he abuses her openly and people just kind of step back and mind their own business also felt kind of truth-y. It reminded me of Stephen King's IT actually, in how a lot of the parents were just as big of a monster as the psychotic clown. But this just made the book feel super depressing, and so did Park's father's hyper-masculinity and how he was always comparing his son (unfavorably) to his white-passing son, Josh, which was portrayed in a much more wishy-washy way than Eleanor's abuse was. It kind of felt like there were a lot of toxic views being thrown around about being Asian versus being masculine in Park's house, and it didn't really feel like that was touched upon or resolved in a satisfactory way (at least, in my white opinion).

Regarding the story and the love story-- meh. I actually thought this was a MUCH better book than FANGIRL. All of Rowell's heroines so far seem to be really antisocial and prickly and not in a fun way (more like a WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU STAHP sort of way), but whereas Cath made me want to throw all of the pages with her name on them in a paper shredder, I could actually sympathize with Eleanor since it felt like she felt like she HAD to shut people out, to keep from getting hurt, and this was an ingrained behavior that she had learned from living with an abuser and an enabler (her mom).

Without the fun 1980s setting and the interracial dating and the abuse, this is just a pretty lackluster teen romance. It doesn't even really have an HFN or an HEA unless you use your imagination and read between the lines, so, like, it's not even satisfying on that level. I didn't hate this, but I didn't love it either, and I remain unswayed in my conviction that Rainbow Rowell is simply Not For Me.

2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars