“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
It is difficult to pull quotes from this book that don’t sound cheesy out of context. But that’s the point. Eleanor and Park are sixteen; this is their first love. This is when they understand butterflies, this is when they feel disintegration upon touch, sleepless nights, sneaking first kisses, always stumbling for words that aren’t yet there, because they never will be.
Eleanor gets on the bus, the first day of her new school and all the seats are taken. The strict hierarchy of adolescence is already in play and she is a disruption to the strict pecking order. And Park is angry with her, embarrassed for her. And he gives up his seat for her.
This is not a pretty story of boy-meets-girl. Eleanor is messy, she’s from an abusive home and much of her life revolves around surviving; at home, on the bus, at school where she is the new target for bullies. Park struggles with ideas of masculinity imposed on him by his father and he struggles with being Asian in a predominately white community.
And so this story is never pretty; it lacks closure, it closes its eyes to obvious problems and tries really, really hard to stay in the love story between Eleanor and Park. But the story can’t stay there; Eleanor has an abusive stepfather and teenage love is not forever.
I suspect many people read this and hope for a different ending. They read it and they form an obvious opinion of what the three words were – and I’ll admit that was my immediate, gut-reaction to it. As I think about it, however, I’m not Sure Eleanor would write that – that she would have healed enough in just a year to love a Park that was far away in years and in distance.
Nothing ever ends.