Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park: a kind of brutal honesty--a not shirking from imperfection, from characters' own hangups over their imperfections. Which, by some strange alchemy, transforms them into something desirable, extraordinary, dimensional.
Too many great things to say about this book--the narrative voice(s), the awkward stumble-and-fall into love, the mounting anxiety that shit is going to hit the fan, the three-word postcard that narrows hope to a fine point.
What I'm stealing: a powerful self-consciousness about who one is that feels true. It ends up being the thing that makes us root for Eleanor and Park and fall in love with their love.
