I read this after reading 'Fangirl' on a recommendation in Maria Sachiko Cecire's 'Re-enchanted.' I enjoyed the dialogues in 'Fangirl', finding them sharp and witty, so I thought I'd give this a go. It's kind of OK, I suppose, for the young readership it's intended for, but there are issues.

There has been a collective recognition that YA literature - indeed, literature in general - has excluded some voices. Heroes and heroines have been white, middle-class, cis and pretty. In 'Eleanor and Park' Rowell seems to have set out to confront this criticism. Her heroine is fat, freckled and red-headed. Her hero is half-Korean. Eleanor's two best friends are black. The author is obviously trying to write a book that is inclusive.

This doesn't quite come off. As nearly all the characters in the book are close to stereotype - I'm not criticising here ... without stereotype, there is very little fiction - Park, his mother - who is described as doll-like - and the two black girls, DeNice and Beebi, all threaten to collapse into form at times. DeNice is the sharp black girl, Beebi is the big one with the huge smile, and so on.

In the end, I give her cookies for trying, but it's perhaps the case that you can't really deal with race when writing from whiteness. (A lot of authors just pencil in their characters brown and leave it a that: Rowell attempts to go beyond that).


On the love story which is at the centre of the plot, I have to go with this review - www.goodreads.com/review/show/549828838?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1 . Rowell herself seems doubtful; she has her heroine give a rough critique of 'Romeo and Juliette' in which she notes that the star-crossed pair are just too young to have really fallen in love. Then she heaps on sentence after sentence about the feelings that they have for each other, as if she's afraid the reader won't believe her, won't get the message.

The two school bullies, Steve and Tina, are nicely seen; Rowell manages to give them a little depth and the reader can glimpse the children beyond the hulking monsters. The horrors of Eleanor's home are well done, and seem to be drawn from life. Park's ambivalence about his parents' relationship - their love for each other is utterly reassuring, but their love for each other is posited on white male fantasies about Asian women - is neatly placed to make the reader think about why he is drawn to Eleanor.

Rowell is a writer, and she'll write better books than this one.