To turn a string into a data structure you could use eval. You shouldn't have to do that very often though, because with macros and functions you can do what you might otherwise want to do with eval, and do it more cleanly.

As for eLisp, it is an older Lisp. It predates the acceptance of lexical scope, and so doesn't support things like closures. In my eyes that makes it a inferior, but YMMV.

Cheers,
Ben