Looking for Errors: A Critique and Review of Rowell’s Eleanor and Park

by Sarah Mae Faith Zamora

The bestselling novel Eleanor and Park is written by author Rainbow Rowell, who has also
written other bestsellers such as Attachments and Fangirl. The novel was first published on year
2013. It gained lots of positive remarks from world-renowned authors such as John Green and Gayle
Forman. It is a story set on the year 1986 about two sixteen-year-olds falling in love despite their
differences and finding shared appreciation in music and comics. Eleanor and Park are the names of
the protagonists and although this was written on a third-person point of view, it sounded like each
characters were narrating how the story progressed through each of their perspectives.

The book contained 325 pages in all, including the title page and acknowledgments. There
wasn’t enough time to count the number of words used in the entire novel though. The story took
place in Omaha, Nebraska, set over a course of one school year, and conversations mostly consisted
that of sixteen-year-olds and under. Informal English was expected since obviously it’s in a high
school setting, even slang terms such as thuggy and pervy are occasionally used. In terms of structure,
the novel was written in a very modern but deliberate pattern. Paragraphs started with the name of
whichever protagonist was seeing how things were from his or her perspective. The author has
successfully managed to write this in a third-person point of view without spilling or spoiling
everything for the readers. It just has the right amount of sweetness and bitterness and just about
enough incidences to make you think twice about life and the people you’re connected to. With
regards to the novel’s syntax and grammar, I can’t find anything more than seven mistakes which are
totally intended to emphasize the point that the person talking is not a native speaker and could
therefore be expected to commit such mistakes.

The following are the erroneous statements I found while reading the book. Enclosed in the
parentheses are the corrections I made to it.

1. “Your Eleanor,” she said, “she come from big family.” – page 189, chapter 32
(“Your Eleanor,” she said, “she comes from a big family.”)
2. “Since Josh start school. I get my GED, I go to beauty school, get license, get permit...” page
210, chapter 35 (“Since Josh started school, I got my GED, went to beauty school, got my license
and permit...”)
3. “You miss your bus.” – page 218, chapter 35 (“You’ll miss your bus.”)
4. Tina’s face was hard. “So where you gonna go?” (Tina’s face was hard. “So where are you going
to go?”)

The first three sentences above are in fact statements from the same character in the novel – Mrs.
Sheridan. These are actually only few of the mistakes that I found. And these were all completely
intentional mistakes, one could easily tell. Park’s mom, Mrs. Sheridan, is Korean, which means the
writer wanted her to sound foreign and it worked. I would say though that it was a little overdone.
Park was sixteen, and her mom married at 18 leaving Korea for USA to be with her American husband.
I don’t really think she’d sound that bad when she’d spent almost half of her life away from her native
country. This is just my opinion anyway. I think if a person is exposed enough in such environment
and language, he or she would eventually learn how it’s really used like it was his or her own. But this
isn’t true to every foreign speaker though. So I’m assuming Park’s mom is one of the few exceptions.

Anyway, there were also a few typo errors I found while reading. I would say they’re typo because I
have huge respect for this book and its writer and I refuse to believe it wasn’t an accident.

1. Mrs. Dunne loved the opportunity to be good in a crisis, so all Park had to do was imply that
it was a emergency. – page 161, chapter 28 (Mrs. Dunne loved the opportunity to be good in a
crisis, so all Park had to do was imply that it was an emergency.)
2. What does Tina have to do this? – page 175, chapter 30 (What does Tina have to do with this?)

These are minor errors that don’t really look wrong at first glance. Also, in page 147, when Eleanor
said, “I heard people yelling and gunshots,” I believe it causes a little confusion in how it was structured
because it almost sounds like what she heard was people yelling gunshots. I’m not quite sure if this
is incorrect though but I figured that the sentence could be improved. It would have sounded better
if she said, “I heard gunshots and people yelling.”

So far I haven’t found any misspelled words or incorrect use of punctuations. I’d probably be more
surprised if I did. Another thing that caught my attention while trying to look for mistakes was the
presence of incomplete sentences. I had just recently learned, when I researched further, that the
independent clauses or complete sentences practiced in standard and formal writing is not
necessarily wrong or unacceptable in novel writing. I looked this up on the internet and found that
authors intentionally use fragmented statements to add more drama and style to their writing. This
adds a profound effect on the reader because in real life, people don’t really talk in complete
sentences all the time, and for the author’s writing to sound more realistic apparently fragmented
sentences in novel writing are not just accepted but welcomed even. An example from the novel
would be these lines from chapter one, page eight: She reminded Park of a scarecrow or one of the
trouble dolls his mom kept on her dresser. Like something that wouldn’t survive in the wild. The last line
is apparently an incomplete thought, a dependent variable. But as I said before, fiction and prose
writing is completely different from academic or formal and both arguments are now generally
accepted by linguists.

Looking for errors in a published book such as Eleanor and Park was no easy thing at all. This
was not how I imagined it would be, honestly. I realize now that when we read for fun, we don’t really
take into account the standard rules in syntax and grammar especially when such minor errors can
be easily ignored and forgiven. If there’s one thing this assignment has taught me, it’s that life
shouldn’t always be taken seriously, and that if we keep looking for flaws and imperfections in people
and in ourselves, we’d miss out the fun and excitement life has to offer. Just like how I had to read
through these lines in the book, it was very challenging to be engaged with the story and be critical
at the same time. As teachers though, since we have a responsibility to teach students what is
prescribed as standard in the rules of grammar, it is important that we are aware of these rules and
that we practice them too. People always say that we cannot give what we do not have. Taking note
of the grammar, punctuation and structure of this novel has definitely made me more aware of the
rules I would also have to follow in writing my own. Despite its minor errors and typos in grammar
and structure, Eleanor and Park is no doubt a good read, captivating hearts of adults and teens alike.
As cliché as the saying goes but truly nobody is perfect. Everyone commits mistakes, apparently even
published and bestselling authors.
(photo taken on page 175 of novel Eleanor and Park, a typo error most readers don’t notice)