Kim's Reviews > Eleanor and Park

I hate this book. I hate it with..with…HATE. It’s visceral, I mean literally VISCERAL, like affecting me internally. My arms are humming and my legs are pounding and my throat has closed and my fingers shake and such hate from the bowels of depth or depth of bowels or whatever you think is right because I can’t think I’m so filled with….

Want. Need. Loss. Despair.

This is a love story. It’s a story of two young people falling in love.

“Romeo and Juliet are just two rich kids who’ve always gotten every little thing they want. And now, they think they want each other.”
“They’re in love..” Mr. Stessman said, clutching his heart.
“They don’t even know each other,” she said.
“It was love at first sight.”
“It was ‘Oh my God, he’s so cute’ at first sight. If Shakespeare wanted you to believe they were in love, he wouldn’t tell you in almost the very first scene that Romeo was hung up on Rosaline… It’s Shakespeare making fun of love.” She said.
“They why has it survived?”….”Tell us, why has Romeo and Julie survived four hundred years?”
Park hated talking in class. Eleanor frowned at him, then looked away. He felt himself blush.
“Because…” he said quietly, looking at his desk, “Because people want to remember what it’s like to be young? And in love?”

See? Rainbow Rowell is making fun of us. We should all be storming her door with torches and yard rakes.

It’s not like books haven’t done this to me before, but maybe just maybe I’m wiser now.. maybe I’ve gained some distance from that ‘When he touched Eleanor’s hand, he recognized her. He knew. Eleanor: Disintegrated. ….. If you’ve ever wondered what that feels like, it’s a lot like melting—but more violent.”

Or maybe not.

Because this isn’t REAL. It doesn’t LAST. You can’t NEED a person like that forever. It FADES, it withers and dies and if it doesn’t outwardly die, it limps along begrudgingly muttering bits of snarkyness under its halitosis laden breath.

And that is why I hate it so much, it stirred up all that stale oxytocin that is mixing with my gastric juices and flung it around right back into circulation... visceral and made me feel weak, made me cry. Made me wish for that.

But, it only happens in books. I have to keep reminding myself of that. The good never lasts. And it’s never the big dramatic orchestra laden climax that does it. It’s just life. And the memories are there and they sting and a glimmer of hope of having that again rises up until you put down the book and know that there really isn’t an Eleanor or a Park and it’s the end of Say Anything all over again when Lloyd and Diane are on the plane and they look at each and you know… you just know that they’re not going to last.

Maybe you cry for that old self. Or maybe you let the bitterness eat at you. All’s Fair..