I read this book for the 2014 Book Genre Challenge.
I'm going to say it right away: I did not like this book. While I didn't hate it to pieces to warrant a 1 star rating, I thought it was boring, racist, and it made me really uncomfortable. I did not like the characters nor the story and, which is worse, I couldn't believe the characters nor the story. To me, the characters felt flat and the story unrealistic.
This review will be me commenting the thoughts that I had while reading the book. If you loved this book and you don't want to read a negative opinion about it, I suggest you stop this review now. I don't have many nice things to say about it. Also, this review may contain spoilers and it does contain quotes from the book.
- A+ for Park in the beginning. New girl and all he can think is that she looks like a scarecrow. For one who is afraid the other kids will pick on him, he can be extremely mean;
- 'Especially not for someone like this'. A+ again, Park. That's the spirit!
- 'the Asian kid'. Not 'the guy' or whatever. 'The Asian kid'. And it goes on for the entire duration of the book. While I give Rowell my congratulations for trying to portray the racism and prejudice that Asian citizens of the US had to endure during that time (and sadly still have to endure now), there is no need to remind us at every page that his Asian by saying 'Asian kid' or 'Asian boy'. And the worse is that this is how Eleanor describes him on her head: the Asian boy;
- I didn't like how we know close to nothing about Park's mom. Park doesn't know much about his mom or her culture!
- Now, this is a peeve of mine, but I hate that every foreigner character in books speaks the same way. They can live in a country for ages, but they don't know the most basic grammar rules of the English language. I'm not talking about accents, there's nothing wrong with those. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes as well, but you don't need to make one mistake after the other only because you are not a native speaker! Your foreign characters don't need to be written like that, there will be other things to define them, like their culture! Which Rowell completely forgot;
- Oh, the bullshit!
- 'Asia is out-of-control huge'. Yup, nice way to describe it;
- 'Whatever perversion coused him to like her'. Yes, that totally makes me buy the whole 'they're completely in love' thing;
- I liked how Eleanor wanted to tell him 'that he was prettier than any girl' (yes, that was sarcasm). Why? Because he's Asian, of course!
- And, if you had forgotten Park was Asian, his almond flavored eyes would remind you of that, and the way they almost desappeared when he smiled, or his skin, or his ninja magic, or... I'll just stop here. Eleanor almost objectifies Park and the fact that he is Asian, it was something that really bothered me when I was reading;
- This next bit made me really, really, really angry for a number of reasons. It was the Dainty China people and how Park's mother reminded Eleanor of one. And also how Park's father 'sneaked her [Park's mom] out of Korea in his pocket'. Seriously, I screamed with the book during this bit. I couldn't believe that! I guess it could be an attempt from Rowell of showing the way Asian people are stereotypied ands seen as the 'other', the 'different', thus something that needed to be romanticized. But then I saw it wasn't. Eleanor stopped looking at Mindy as a person and started seeing her as something that could be smuggled out of a country. And then I read Rowell's reasons as to why Park is Korean and I saw this:
'So … in Eleanor & Park, Park’s dad gets sent to Korea because his brother has died in combat in Vietnam. He meets his soulmate there. And he brings her home.'
No, ok. No. It wasn't home for her. No, she is not an object to be 'sneaked out of Korea'. She is a person. One who left her cultural identity, family, and language back to go home with the man she loved. But a woman with a solid cultural background that is hardly ever mentioned, if ever mentioned at all, who only seems to be there to make Park half Koren so he can whine about it;
- Then Eleanor starts wondering where the slim girls keep their organs...
- Park goes 'weird white girls are my only option' and 'it was nice to have the most popular girl in the neighborhood offering herself to him every now and then.' And people wonder why I don't like him;
- Oh, he also goes 'He'd thought that he was over caring what people thought about him. He'd thought that loving Eleanor proved that'. And people wonder why I don't think they were in love...
- Eleanor says Park looked as dangerous as Ming the Merciless;
- 'Nobody thinks Asian guys are hot' and 'Asian girls are different. White guys think they're exotic' and 'Everything that makes Asian girls seem exotic make Asian guys seem like girls' made me want to throw the book against the wall (I only didn't because I was reading the book on my Kobo). I could spend a long time talking about fetishzation of Asian women (and all other 'different' women) and how dangerous it is to put something like this lightly on a book, but I guess you can see that for yourself;
- The ending felt bland. I didn't like how the writings on her book were only solved in the end and how absolutely nothing was done about it, how her siblings would remain in the care of a abusive alcoholic guy, and how Park's father let him drive Eleanor alone at 2am.
I didn't like the book, but I also didn't hate it to pieces (because there were some interesting aspects - such as the huge difference between their families and its influence on their relationship -, even though they were underused and underdeveloped in my opinion). So my rating is:
2 out of 5 stars.
