The other pop culture element that Park and Eleanor share is comics, which is interesting, because comics are often understood to be something that appeals more to boys. I wanted Eleanor to have something more than her difficult home life, and I wanted Park to have something to give her, and music did both those things. My junior high and high school existence was depressing, and this stuff made me think there was something else, that someday I’d be an adult and I’d be able to get to it. It gave me the sense that there were things happening in the world that I didn’t have access to. When you turned on the radio, you’d hear Wham, but then someone would give you a mix tape with a Smiths song on it. And it’s more personal because their 1986 is my 1986, which was a time when there was suddenly all this alternative, underground stuff happening in popular culture and slowly making its way to Omaha. As I wrote it, I was picturing each scene as if it were a movie. I wanted the reader to be smiling throughout. With Attachments, my goal was to write a really good romantic comedy. What makes it more personal and less safe? It’s an embarrassing, Sally Field-esque moment: you like me. But everything about Eleanor & Park is more personal – I feel like I’m out on a limb – and so for people to say that it touches them really touches me. When Attachments came out and people liked it, I’d have a warm feeling of having made a connection.

What’s it like to get this kind of reaction?

The book has garnered a number of starred reviews, including from PW, as well as pre-publication buzz from bloggers. Two beautiful, but extremely unpleasant, people are terrible to each other for an hour, accidentally kiss, then decide to like each other during an extremely vague montage. When I watch a romantic comedy, I feel like they’re selling something that doesn’t exist. I want to consume love stories, but 90% of them feel totally inauthentic. And I also think that real life is more romantic if you allow it to be, if you don’t act like it’s immature to get excited. And if they’re older and they have, to feel it as a sense memory.Įmotions run high in the novel. If they’re young and never been in love, for them to know – yes, this how it feels. My motivation was to make people actually feel love, to give them a realistic view of it. She spoke with PW by phone from her home in Omaha – where Eleanor & Park, a love story about two outsiders, is set – about realistic romance, the power of music, and not being precious about writing.Įleanor & Park covers a lot of ground, from difficult family situations to the way music can open up a new world. Martin’s Griffin, Feb.), hits stores soon, and a second young adult novel is due out this fall. Her adult debut, Attachments, came out in 2011 her YA debut, Eleanor & Park (St. Rainbow Rowell – yes, that is her real name – is having a good couple of years.

Eleanor and park