Eleanor & Park
I decided to read this because so many of my friends gave it high marks on goodreads. And well they should. This story follows the intertwining stories of two 16 year olds in Nebraska, Eleanor and Park. Eleanor is new and Park is just trying to get along without drawing too much attention to himself. Besides being new, Eleanor seems to love drawing attention to herself, dressing in eccentric ways and not acting like every other teenager at their high school. These two find themselves unexpectedly bus buddies and their relationship develops from there.
I found many things to enjoy about this book:
1. It portrays the awkwardness of high school in realistic ways
2. Poverty is shown as real and not easily solved
3. The characters are into things that aren't necessarily common (like Tae Kwon Do) but which I could relate to
I also really enjoyed the tension that Rowell created between the characters at various points in the story.
I feel like I'm not doing justice to the book in this review. So, just take my word for it and give it a try.
A note on the audiobook: Since the book switches back and forth between Eleanor and Park's perspectices the voice actors do the same thing. This was a neat thing to listen to. There was a problem with my version when I downloaded it and it didn't include all of the second to last track, so I had to finagle a copy to read. Thankfully there is a bookstore in the town I live in and amazingly the owner had a damaged copy she let me borrow for the day. This was a book that consumed me. So, reader beware.
Landline
Turns out Landline is not a YA book like Rowells others but is an adult book. Makes sense now that I think of it. It follows the main character, Georgie McCool as she struggles between managing her work life and giving the love and attention her family crave. She begins by announcing to her husband she will not be able to go to Omaha for Christmas this year because she has an important interview in which she can pitch her own show to a possible producer. As a TV writer she has had to write other people's stories and now is her big chance. Her husband ends up going with their daughters to Omaha without her and Georgie must decide what this means and how to deal with it. As she is figuring this out (or not figuring it out) she discovers that the old phone in her childhood bedroom at her mom's house allows her to connect with Neil (her husband) in the past. At such a crucial time she has to decide how she will use this powerful tool, if at all.
Several things I liked about this book:
1. Georgie McCool is kind of like Liz Lemon! And I've been watching a lot of 30 Rock lately, so I thought that was neat.
2. The magic time phone was treated with respect but also skepticism, so it worked even though it was the only magical part of the book.
3. There are flashbacks throughout during which you learn how Georgie and Neil got together and how various characters related and still relate including Georgie's writing partner Seth and Neil's ex-fiancee.
4. The conclusion in some ways seemed inevitable yet i wasn't sure until it actually happened that it would happen.
Some things about the book were difficult, like the marital stress, the lack of communnication, the (apparent) crumbling of a life. But while difficult to read, they are all realistic and fit with everything else that was happening.
Fangirl
Fangirl is about Cath, a twin heading off to college for the first time with her sister Wren. Yet since Wren wants to assert her indendence they aren't rooming together for the first time in their lives and Cath is already anxious about leaving home. She is obsessed with Simon Snow, a fictional world similar to Harry Potter and she and her sister had been writing fan fiction about that world and Cath continues to do so. As she encounters her roommate, fiction writing class, and a couple of attractive guys Cath has to find her place. Yet she continues to feel a lack of one. This in addition to her sister's partying habits and the relentless felt presence of a mom who abandoned them when they were 8. Sprinkled throughout are excerpts both from Simon Snow canon and Cath's fictional story Carry On, Simon.
I really enjoyed this book. I found it deals with family dynamics, particularly mental illness very realisitically and in a way that I think could introduce it to people who only have stigma to go off of. Cath grows as a character in satisfying ways. Oh and it really made me want to re-read Harry Potter. And it made me want to write.
By the time I got to Fangirl I could recognize some phrasing and plot tendencies that run through all of Rowell's writing, even in the books within the book in the case of Fangirl. This was more apparent to me than in other authors whose works I have read back to back. I don't know if this is just to be expected or if it is a flaw in Rowell's writing. Nonetheless, I greatly enjoyed her books. My order of preference is: Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Landline. Stay tuned, folks, apparently a Simon Snow book is due out this fall and supposedly Dreamworks will eventually make a film out of Eleanor & Park.
