Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
328 pages
Published 2013
Read from May 13 to May 15
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
Why do people read trash when things so much better are available?
Well, I shouldn't talk; I've persevered through my share of hack sci-fi for no better reason than it had dinosaurs on the cover. What I mean is, why do people enjoy trash, why do they seek it out and devour it and make multibillion-dollar multimedia empires out of vampires hanging out in high schools, when books like Eleanor & Park exist?
Rainbow Rowell is doing all right for herself. I may not have heard of her, or of this book, before Monday, but she has some successful novels out there, and at least one movie deal. It's not as if I've ever paid attention to the contemporary YA scene -- there could be all kinds of books this excellent, and I wouldn't know about them until someone recommended them, or until they made some kind of "top banned books of the year" list. But that's the thing, isn't it? Why is this level of quiet, emotionally acute brilliance seemingly unknown outside its genre boundaries? Why does this lack crossover status, when every half-literate suburban mom who hadn't touched a book since high school knows about Twilight and its imitators?
Or maybe I'm just especially ignorant about books outside of my narrow province. Also possible.
I wonder, though: What is the intended audience for YA fiction, really? Do high school kids actually know about books like this? Or is it all college students, librarians, teachers, and people on Tumblr? It almost feels like this book was written, in Eleanor's apt description of Romeo and Juliet, for people who want to remember being young and in love. I had a hard time picturing actual teenagers connecting to it -- but I'm probably underestimating teenagers. I know I liked to read as a teen, and I couldn't have been the only one. But this book felt like it was written just as much for a wistful, nostalgic adult audience as a teenage one. Not that I'm complaining.
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