The school bus seems an extremely hostile place, particularly at the back, from the start. Our protagonist, Park, starts out by pressing his earphones in and trying to plan music which may drown out the noise and slight bullying. This is clearly an inauspicious stage on which steps our heroine, Eleanor, the new girl in school.
The new girl took a deep breath and stepped further down the aisle. Nobody would look at her. Park tried not to, but it was kind of a train wreck/eclipse situation.
The girl just looked like exactly the sort of person this would happen to.
Not just new – but big and awkward. With crazy hair, bright red on top of curly. And she was dressed like…like she wanted people to look at her. Or maybe like she didn’t get what a mess she was.
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Despite not being taken by her at first, despite resenting his own act of kindness in letting her sit down beside him on the bus, despite Eleanor being the opposite of cool in the eyes of all the kids in school, Park rapidly finds himself attracted to this misfit.
Eleanor has not just moved to a new school, she is disadvantaged on so many fronts, which she hides from everyone: having a stepfather who both hates her as well as sexually harasses her, having 4 other younger siblings who are not allies, having nearly no money and a rather deprived homelife and a difficult domestic setup, being somewhat chubby and well developed for her age, etc. Eleanor knows her situation is messed up, but it is remarkable what confidence she manages to hold onto, what dignity and mental poise.
Park comes from a loving household, by contrast, having a good family and security, as well as intelligence and a sweet disposition. He is half-Korean, and the depictions of his mum and dad are also charming. It is not without its ups and downs as a family, but Park knows himself to be lucky, and deeply loved, which he also realises when he gets to know Eleanor better, that this is not something she can depend on.
The novel is extremely skillful in how it depicts the growing romance and fills in the background of the two characters. It oscillates between Park’s and Eleanor’s thinking voices, and does this well enough never to seem irritating as a writing device. The two young people fall in love in the way the young do, with such abandonment of the self, with such desperation and awe, and in the case of these two in particular, with such selflessness and lack of ego, that teenaged romance though this may be, it is an extremely touching, sweet story in Rowell’s hands. Like all the best YA novels, it avoids cliches, it avoids predictable angsts, it avoids run-of-the-mill hangups. The characters display a lot of originality and streaks of sweetness, a winning combination. This is the book which made Rowell’s name, and justifiably so. A consummate storyteller, and a gem in the YA genre.
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