Eleanor & Park

by Rainbow Rowell

"Hey," he said. It came out hard and frustrated. "I told you to smile because you're pretty when you smile."
She walked to the bottom of the steps, then looked back at him. "It'd be better if you thought I was pretty when I don't."
"That's not what I meant," he said, but she was walking away.
When Park went inside, his mother came out to smile at him. "Your Eleanor seems nice," she said.
He nodded and went to his room. No, he thought, falling into his bed. No, she doesn't.

-Eleanor & Park

Eleanor is described as being good, honorable, honest, but not nice. She is the opposite of nice, whatever it is that nice is supposed to be. Nice usually means clean, polite, agreeable. It's interesting to note that Eleanor is all of those things as well -- she is clean, she is polite, and she wants to please people. But because she is honest, she lacks the smooth distance that would codify her as being a nice girl. 

Though hailing from a completely different genre, Eleanor is reminiscent of Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series with her "knack of speaking uncomfortable truths" (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). I love that she challenges Park's motives, and forces him to clarify and own up to his feelings for her -- both his love for her, and his unconscious resistance of fully embracing her and her strangeness. She doesn't let him get away with hurting her during his period of adjusting to her, and she doesn't pretend that she isn't hurt when she is. She doesn't sacrifice her feelings and her integrity for the sake of his, and I find that part of her admirable honesty, and her strong sense of self. I wish I had been that honest and sure and brave when I was young. I wish I was that honest and sure and brave today.

Eleanor can see that each time she gives Park a nugget of her true, broken self in the early part of their relationship, it takes him a moment to get over his aversion to things that aren't nice. 

"I hate meeting new people," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Because they never like me."
"I liked you."
"No, you didn't. I had to wear you down."

How painful for her, and for anyone learning to trust and to open up, to have those honest pieces of yourself inspire an unconscious flinching and a subtle rejection. This is something we all face, especially as teens, when we first start taking the risks involved with forming deeper relationships with people outside of our family circle.

Eleanor & Park is one of those novels that touches you again as an adult because we can remember that first time we felt so passionate about someone. It would touch you as a teen as well, because you're experiencing that passion for the first time. The realism of this novel lends it credibility. The book jacket says that Eleanor and Park are "smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts," but what really happens is that this is never discussed, never considered until the inevitable end. Park is blind to this reality, and Eleanor understands all too well that she will be alone again in the end. Really, the only person "smart enough" is the reader, although we all read in hope, and that keeps us ripping along right up to the end.