The abuse Eleanor suffers is daily, and it is personal-at the start of the novel, she’s just moved home after having been kicked out of the house for a year for standing up to Richie.

Her cruel, drunken, lecherous stepfather Richie hits Eleanor’s mother Sabrina, refuses to put a door on the bathroom so that he can monitor his stepchildren’s activities in there, fires “warning shots” at neighbors when they make too much noise too late, and, it’s eventually revealed, writes lewd, explicit messages on Eleanor’s paper textbook covers. Eleanor’s household is a hotbed of poverty, abuse, and misery. From Eleanor’s poverty-stricken, fear-ridden home environment to Park’s idyllic but rigid family structure, Rowell shows how conflict and abuse, in varying shades and differing levels of intensity, are often at the core of families of all shapes, sizes, and configurations. Rainbow Rowell doesn’t shy away from depicting the more difficult and painful aspects of family life. Through both Eleanor and Park’s experiences with family life that range from the uncomfortable to the downright dangerous, Rowell suggests that for many individuals-even those who seem safe and privileged-family and some measure of mistreatment often go hand-in-hand.

As Eleanor and her family descend deeper into a spiral of abuse, she seeks refuge increasingly often at Park’s house, which becomes a safe haven for her-but is often blind to the smaller but still painful abuses Park himself suffers at the hands of his controlling, straight-laced father. The differences between Eleanor and Park’s respective families aren’t just socioeconomic-while Park comes from a stable home, Eleanor’s family life is in shambles, and she, her mother Sabrina, and her siblings are subjected daily to fear, manipulation, and abuse at the hands of her stepfather Richie.

Eleanor and park novel