Sometimes You Need More Than Bookmarklike Feelings
Stop me if you've heard this before, girl breaks up with boy and leaves his entire life directionless. The next person he falls in love with, he does so by reading her daily e-mail exchanges.
Too creepy?
How about this one, two misfits find each other because they’re forced to sit next each other on the bus. Why are they forced? Because she’s new and he guesses anything is better than an empty seat, besides he’s too busy listening to punk rock and reading comics to notice.
High school love is gross right?
Fine, last story. Twin sisters go off to college for the first time. One isn’t socially awkward and one is. One parties too much and the other is too nervous to even eat in the dining hall, so she spends her nights in her dorm writing fan fiction and stressing about life.
Oh, you've heard that one before too?
Well you must be a bigger Rainbow Rowell fan than me. If you haven’t heard of her and you think you know where each of the three stories above leads you’d be wrong. Rowell’s three books: Attachments, Eleanor & Park, and Fangirl, are all worth their weight in words and feels. If any of the books were adapted into movies you’d pray that that the movies would be able to keep the heart in each story. Yes, these books are about love, life, and everything in between but there is nothing corny about them. Happy endings exist without the sense of happily ever after. Rowell leaves you with a sense that nothing ever ends or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on your part that she’ll write out the rest of her character’s lives.
Rowell’s characters feel like old friends you no longer talk to. Her books are snapshots of their lives. And after you’re finished you’ll wonder what happens next. You’ll understand that some relationships won’t make it into the sequels, or even a year after if the story continued. However, you will never root against her characters. Even if they’re far from perfect and you’d know exactly what to do in their situation, you just hope for a satisfying pay off. In fact, the bad guys in her books are less guys and more feelings. Self doubt. Pride. Overreactions and bad timing. There isn't a malevolent wizard behind the curtain dictating events, only life. Some things remain broken but her characters have no choice but to move on. Her characters are broken and vulnerable. They’re her first drafts in a published world.
Calling any of Rowell’s books relatable would be true but that would be lazy. Her characters deserve more. However, after finishing any of her three books you get a sense that they all get less of what they deserve and more of what they need.
Don’t take my word for it, go read one of her books. However, if you still need some more convincing here are my three favourite Rainbow Rowell characters.
Lincoln O’Neil
There are moments when you can’t believe something wonderful is happening. And there are moments when your entire consciousness is filled with knowing absolutely that something wonderful is happening.
Lincoln O’Neil is that nice guy who you just can’t figure out why he is single. He’s charming, funny, and rugged. Everything on the surface seems right. However, Attachments isn't about what’s on the surface. It’s about Lincoln’s past, present, and where his future is going. When we first meet Lincoln he is a boy transitioning into adulthood without wanting to leave the safety nets that are built into childhood. He’s become too comfortable in his own skin. This changes when he becomes the IT guy at a newspaper and is in charge of keeping everything running smoothly as Y2K approaches. One aspect of his job is to read through employee e-mails to make sure everything is alright and has to flag any e-mail that is deemed inappropriate in accordance to company guidelines. Simple enough. One problem, he falls in love with a movie critic when reading her e-mails exchanged with her friend. He promises to stop but never does.
In true Lincoln fashion he doesn't do anything. He psyches himself out again and again even when the girl who he’s fallen for has talked about him and called him cute. The entire story is about Lincoln stepping out of his comfort zone to grab something that is worthwhile. I won’t spoil what happens but it doesn't hurt for life to give you a little push — or a perfectly timed spilled box of candy — to get you where you need to go.
Eleanor & Park
She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice, it was supposed to make you feel something.
Alright, I’m cheating here but you cannot have Eleanor without Park nor Park without Eleanor. It’s a universal law or something. And besides it’s my list and you can’t make me choose between them. Their entire relationship and books can be summed up in two sentences in the inside cover: two misfits. one extraordinary love.
The world of Eleanor & Park isn't bleak and hopeless but it isn't all sunshine and rainbows either. It lives somewhere in the middle. After all, it is high school. Where nothing matters except for everything. You could call them misfits but I see them as two kids who couldn't care less about the politics of high school. Eleanor has her own problems, real problems that she could care less what kids thought of her. And Park is fine doing Park. Besides, if it ever gets too much they’ll just drown it out with punk rock. In fact, I wouldn't use extraordinary to describe their love, instead I’d use punk. They shouldn't make sense together but nothing seems so perfect.
Trust me, you’ll face palm at some of their actions and roll your eyes at what they say but you’ll be smiling the entire time you do, except for the parts that break your heart. And you won’t care, in fact you’ll be glad you felt something.
Cather Avery
The problem with playing hide-and-seek with your sister is that sometimes she gets bored and stops looking for you.
And there you are — under the couch, in the closet, wedged behind the lilac tree — and you don’t want to give up, because maybe she’s just biding her time. But maybe she’s wandered off…
Maybe she’s downstairs watching TV and eating the rest of the Pringles.
You wait. You wait until you forget that you’re waiting, until you forget that there’s anything to you beyond stillness and quiet; an ant crawls over your knee, and you don’t flinch. And it doesn't matter now whether she’s coming for you — the hiding is enough. (You win when no one finds you, even if they’re not looking.)
When you break from behind the tree, it’s because you want to. It’s the first breath after a long dive. Branches snap under your feet, and the world is hotter and brighter. Ready or not, here I come.
Here I come, ready or not.
Really? I’m not picking Eleanor & Park as my favourites? I’m picking the socially awkward eighteen year old aspiring writer? Yes, I’m that big of a homer. As great as Eleanor & Park are, and trust me they are fantastic, reading Cath’s first year journey is everything. There isn't any other word I can think of to describe it.
Rowell embodies Cath perfectly. With each page you feel Cath resisting change. On the surface she might not seem like a different person from the first page to the last but she has gone miles in the 430 some pages. Cath isn't fully realized but you get the sense she’s in a better place than where she started. She’ll never be her twin sister but that’s okay. Cath was never interested in becoming anyone new when she went off to school, she just wanted to be Cath. She’s a reminder that no matter how hard we try to stay the same, life will happen.
This plus the fact she’s a writer, loves rap music, and wrote that quote above she’s my favourite. And the fact that Rowell has a talent to build up her characters and give a satisfying pay off and in my opinion no pay off felt as good as Cath’s.
Now I just need to finish Landline.
