This book has been so popular, I feel like everything’s been said about it already! But here goes: it’s about two kids who don’t fit in at school, and seem to be complete opposites, who find each other. Park is half Korean, into comic books and alternative music (this is the eighties- wow, it took me back remembering some of those songs- and lots were mentioned that I didn’t know at all!) His family is fairly well-to-do, pretty comfortable home life, but he feels like he can never please his father. Eleanor is totally different- she’s large, with bright red hair and odd clothing choices- so kids tease, mock and bully her at school. She thinks of herself as overweight and disgusting, so doesn’t expect anyone to ever like her (whereas, for the reader that becomes something to question- by the end of it, I started to think she was just very ample and curvy). Her home life is a disaster- there’s never enough money, she shares a room with four younger siblings, her stepfather is mean-tempered to say the least. She doesn’t let anybody else know what goes on at home. Least of all Park. He can’t even imagine. They meet on the bus when all the other kids taunt Eleanor by denying her a seat, and Park finally slides over and lets her sit by him. At first they just ignore each other. Then Park realizes she’s reading his comic books over his shoulder. So they find a connection via comics- and then music- and start to become friends- and then it quickly slides into something more.
It’s a lovely, tender and sweet story of first love, but not without some jagged edges, misunderstandings and completely different takes on what’s going on- because you read this story from both viewpoints. For example, Eleanor’s clothes. He thinks she dresses oddly as a statement: look how different I am. I thought at first she wore old clothes because she simply had nothing else. But by the end of the story you realize there might be another reason altogether: to make herself unattractive . . . It takes Park a very long time to realize how awful the home situation is that Eleanor’s hiding, whereas for her part, it takes a long time to get up the courage to visit Park’s home, to accept his parents’ hospitality (his mother doesn’t like her at first) and then to open up about some of the realities she’s been hiding. And when her home life finally becomes intolerable, what will they do. Eleanor can’t stay there, but it breaks your heart to see these two who have found so much in each other, forced apart because one of them has to find a safe place.
There’s so much to like about this book. The ease of the flowing prose. The funny, realistic, snappy dialog. The gradual blooming friendship. The surprises- especially how one of the mean girls at school turns out to be not quite so bad. Dismay at how ineffectually adults at school deal with the bullying Eleanor suffers- that felt very real too, unfortunately. I really don’t get why this book has been banned- because of the swearing? it made me cringe a few times, but I was able to gloss over most of it (even though the f-word is among those that bothers me most). How it addresses abuse and sexuality probably is an issue for some people too- though I appreciated that, just like in her other book, the intimacy is portrayed mostly off page, you get more of what the characters think and feel about each other, than what they’re actually doing.
I waffled between giving this book three or four stars. It’s really really good- one you want to just sit and read all day– and I stayed up far too late two nights in a row to finish. Not quite stellar for me, though. Maybe because I’m no longer a teenager? Or because some of the back-and-forth between viewpoints felt a little choppy- it alternates between chapters, which become just pages, and then sometimes every other line or so for several pages in a row. Glad it’s easily marked, but a bit heady switching back and forth so quick.
Borrowed from the public library. The edition I read has fan art on the endpapers, and I really like the pieces by Simini Blocker and Mark Lauren Blado.