It's about these two characters; one is Eleanor. She's the new student. She's a little overweight, has really really red curly hair, she's very quiet, and when she does speak, she's usually pretty funny or sarcastic.
The other character is Park. He's pretty normal. He's Asian, he wears band t shirts, he reads comics, and he leads a pretty normal life.
One day, Eleanor walks onto the bus, and immediately, Park thinks "She's asking for it." Eleanor is really quirky and she's an easy target for bullies. So, when we tries to find a seat on the bus, everyone says mean things to her, and tells her that she can't sit in a certain seat. Finally, Park just says "Sit down!" (plus some unkind words) and she sits next to him.
That is how this amazing story begins.
There are some things I really like about this book so far.
- The main characters sound like teenagers. Unlike in TFiOS, the main characters didn't read genius scripts. They just said what came to mind. They say "like" and "um" but they don't sound completely stupid. They both seem to have decent vocabularies, but they sound like teenagers. Because teenagers throw words like "frazzled" and "gruesome" into sentences, but they also take time to develop their thoughts and fill that time with "ummm . . ." Basically, they sound like they're actually talking to each other, not like the author is just sitting behind her computer, searching for clever comments and synonyms on the internet.
- It is not instaluv. At first, they pretty much hated each other. Slowly, they got used to each other. However, once their relationship picked up steam, it picked up pretty quickly. I almost feel like they found out that they liked each other too quickly, but it wasn't love at first sight, and I really appreciate that in a book.
- The book pretty much captures teenage life. It shows that teenagers do have actual problems to deal with. Eleanor has to deal with a drunken stepdad, and Park has less problems. He just had to pass his classes and stay out of trouble. But the book shows you that they are dealing with bad things.
- There are parental figures. In most books, the parents are usually dead or disappear somewhere along the way as the main characters deal with other things. This book, however, really shows you the negative and positive effects of a certain style of parenting. In Eleanor's case, her parents divorced and she remarried someone who just wasn't right for the family, and I think that has contributed a lot to her shyness and her inability to feel like she belongs and to trust people. In Park's case, his parents really cared a lot about the things he did, and I think that the eyeliner is Park's way of rebelling against that somewhat strict parenting.
- I really like how the author kind of justified their love. This might not make sense with what I'm about to say, but hear me out. Park said that in the ninth (?) grade he kissed a girl and thought he was gay. But he said that when he was around Eleanor, he just felt a really strong connection to her that he didn't feel with anyone else, and I think that just kind of proved to me, the reader, that he actually really cared about Eleanor.
- So, I think about people a lot. One day during lunch, one of my acquaintances (I currently don't have friends) left a Tupperware container on the lunch table. I didn't have a lunch bag, so I asked my other acquaintance if she could put the Tupperware in her lunch bag. She did, and I was just thinking all day if she would bring the Tupperware container back to school the next day, and if it would be awkward, and mehjkhgh. This book just showed me that thinking about stupid things like that is perfectly normal.
Until then . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment