Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

"...people want to remember what it's like to be young. And in love." So says Park, the 16-year-old boy in this modern day Romeo & Juliet. He is right, of course. That's surely why this novel became so popular.

Park is half Korean, a bit of a punk rocker, and doesn't feel that he quite fits in with his peers or even with the other members of his own family. Eleanor is a 16-year-old plus-sized girl from an impoverished dysfunctional home who is intent upon keeping the world at arm's length to avoid being rejected yet again. This is the story of how they become star-crossed lovers (in the romantic, not the physical, sense) and of how forces outside their control try to rip them apart.

Eleanor & Park is a Young Adult novel which can be read with pleasure by an adult, even an old adult, as long as the memory still remains of how intense hand-holding could be, of the first kiss, of how it felt to fall in love for the first time. Cleverly, Rowell has set her story in 1986, so that a teenage reader's 30-something mother will find the book additionally interesting because of the many reference to the music and culture of that time.

Rainbow Rowell does an excellent job of portraying the hesitant actions and intense emotions of teenagers new to the game of love. She switches back and forth between the viewpoints of the boy and girl, but I think a teenage boy would probably rather die than be seen reading it (although he would most likely enjoy it). Of the several YA romances I have read at the suggestion of my granddaughter, this is the best.

A note about the language: I have read that some parents have protested about this book being in school libraries because of the language. Evidently, they have never actually listened to a bunch of teenagers, particularly boys, when they think no adult is listening. Believe me, no teenager will read anything here that he or she does not hear every day at school. It may not be classy, but it's life as it is now.

Recommended for age 14 and up.