“Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's very beautiful over there'. I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”
Can I just say I was never a big fan of contemporary fiction before I read John Green but he has lead me to reassess my reading habits and try more books outside of my comfort zone. Anyway on to the review.
Looking for Alaska tells the story of Miles Halter or 'pudge' as he becomes known. Miles is a friendless high-school student who loves learning famous historical peoples last words. He begs his parents to send him to a boarding school in Alabama were he sees it as his chance to start again and break out of his shell.
Miles goes to boarding school looking for his 'great perhaps', he wants a life of adventure and honestly I think he is trying to find something to live for and boy does he find it. Alaska Young is Miles idea of perfection from the moment he meets her, she is outgoing, reckless and doesn't care what anyone thinks, the type of person Miles wants to be. Looking for Alaska is spilt into two parts, the first counts down the days to a big event and the second counts the days afterwards. Miles was always looking for the 'Great Perhaps' but I don't think he ever thought it would turn out quite like this.
One of my favourite aspects of this book is how John Green deals with depression, I know some may not agree with me but I think Green shows how people dealing with depression are not as easy to spot as some may think, they don't mop around and lie in bed all day, some walk out the house with a smile on their face and you wouldn't ever know anything was wrong. Both Miles and Alaska show how depression can affect different people, Miles is an introvert, back home he had no friends and spent most of his time alone but he is determined to overcome this and forces himself to be someone new whereas Alaska is an extrovert, she masks her vulnerability by being loud and exuberant until its too late and before anyone can help.
Once again Green shows how he is a master with his words and his characters, even though I'm a little older than they are I found myself being able to relate to them and for those few short hours I was able to become Miles and see the world from his eyes, a scared teenager just trying to find himself. Green always has a way of creating relatable characters and once again I was able to see parts of myself in them, Alaska the care-free, book loving girl, who finds herself a little bit lost at times and Miles the shy, caring, sweet boy who is looking for something better, trying to find some meaning to his life.
Green's characters are flawed but they are honest and realistic, they deal with situations in a way any teenager might. Overall I thought that Miles found his 'Great Perhaps' he found it in his courage to move to boarding school, in his love (or infatuation) for Alaska and in dealing with the 'after'. At the end of this book Miles has questioned everything about himself but in the process of doing this he has managed to find himself and perhaps now he is ready for another adventure. I don't believe the 'Great Perhaps' is a destination rather a journey Miles takes to find himself.
Looking for Alaska is a story about finding yourself and loosing yourself, its about love and longing, pain and suffering and not being afraid of searching for your own 'Great Perhaps'.
My rating: 4.5
“The town was paper, but the memories were not.”
Paper Towns follows the story of Quintin 'Q', the one crazy night he spends with Margo Roth Spiegelman and what happens afterwards. The story is spilt into three parts; the strings, the grass and the vessel, each part discusses a different philosophy on life.Margo's 'strings' that can eventually become cut until there is nothing left, Walt Whitman's 'grass' which becomes a metaphor for so many different things, hope, life, death, connectedness or Q's 'cracked vessel' where we start out whole but as life continues on we become cracked and broken. This is my second John Green novel, the first one I read was 'The Fault in Our Stars' which set Mr Green on a very high pedestal. When I finished this book I found it rather hard to decide whether I liked it or not. I liked the themes and ideas behind but I don't think it had be as enthralled as the fault in our stars did but maybe that is just because I had such an emotional connection to the latter.
Margo and Q represent more than just two high school children who've known each other their entire lives but not really known each other. They show how the world views each other, we have these ideas in our heads about people, even people we are extremely close too but are they really true. Do we know the person or just a version of themselves? Q thinks he knows Margo, they live next door to each other, she appears to be happy and care free but is she really, as the story progresses it seems more and more that Margo feels lonely and isolated, misunderstood by those around here. In one particular scene Q thinks he sees Margo laughing when really she is screaming because she is angry. Q has Margo on a pedestal, he likes the idea of her without really knowing who she is.
“When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”
The middle of this book was hard going for me, as they searched for the missing Margo following more and more of her clues, I found myself not caring at some points, at first Margo seemed selfish and uncaring. She knew people would be missing her and yet she just left and it wasn't the first time she had done it and yet as the story progressed and I realised how vulnerable she really was, I stared wondering along with Q if she really had killed herself. Throughout this book Q learns more about how he judges other people based on his own ideas. He has to learn to accept his best friend Ben for his 'honeybunny' and prom loving ways. People aren't going to be who we want them to be but you just need to learn to accept it.
“You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it's going with my girlfriend - but I don't give a shit, man, because you're you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that's okay. They're them. I'm too obsessed with a reference website to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That's okay, too. That's me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually.”
Paper Towns is a wonderful if yet slow moving and slightly repetitive story about looking at more than just a paper image of someone. This book gets you to think about people being more than just the outside shell that they allow us to see. People are complex, with hidden layers and it is only when the cracks start to show that we can really start to see them at all.
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book."
Warning: You will cry when you read this book.
Hazel is a sixteen year old terminally ill cancer suffer, who has to carry an oxygen tank everywhere she goes, she is depressed, she is dying. Hazel meets Augustus Walters at her cancer support group, he is charming, handsome and has lost his leg due to cancer. Augustus or 'Gus' wants to make a lasting impression in life, he wants to be heroic.
This is not a book about cancer, the fact that these characters have cancer is just a small part of who they are, its a book about life shown with brutal honesty that only those that know how precious time is can give.
I absolutely loved this book even if it made me an emotional wreck, I cried continuously through the final few chapters and longer after it finished.
Hazel and Gus relationship is played out beautifully, she is scared of getting to close to him because she doesn't want to leave any more casualties behind after she dies. Hazel was my favourite character from this book, she was realistic about her life, she'd come close to dying before and she knew that she wouldn't get a miracle, nothing was going to save her from the cancer that was ravaging her body. She was strong and funny and above all else she was relatable. Even though at the beginning Gus seemed arrogant and head-strong he was far from it, his favourite book was a retelling of his favourite video game, he was funny and smart and would move heaven and hell just to make Hazel smile.
I don't want to talk about how amazing John Greens writing is, you'll know that yourself from the first chapter. He sucks you in and doesn't let go. He creates a world that should be dark and depressing but instead is filled with laughter and happiness. Its a beautiful story that's both heart-warming and heartbreaking and the characters will stay with you long after you finish reading.
