Blogging Every Day in May ~ Day Eight
*********SPOILER ALERT*********
Tuesday night found me drearily getting ready for bed without the prospect of a good book to read...until I noticed
Looking For Alaska by John Green propped up in orderly fashion on my roommate's desk between
Divergent and
Papertowns. After reading
The Fault in Our Stars last year,
An Abundance of Katherines this past February and then seeing
John Green at the LA Festival of Books, I was all for another John Green book.
I poked my head out of the room and casually asked my roomie if I could borrow it, to which she responded "Sure, but do you really have time?" The question of whether or not I had time or not is moot because I proceed to finish the book by 4:30pm the next day very close to tears on the elliptical. Yes, I read it while working out because I needed to multitask in order to have time.
The pace at which I read the book at least indicates that it was a fast read. Green writes for a teenage audience, and though he doesn't "dumb it down" for the readers, the book is obviously written from the perspective of teenagers with fast-paced dialogue and action. There are moments of reflection but they last a page at most. Green organized the book around an event. The novel is split into before the event and after the event and each chapter is labeled a chronologically the number of days before and after it.
The story opens at the sad scene of a going away party. Green, the master of the awkward, out-of-place teenage character once again paints Miles "Pudge" Halter as the outcast adolescent on his way to boarding school to find the "Great Perhaps". Miles' physical journey to boarding school and the separation he gets from his parents represents the philosophical journey he takes as he tries to literally understand the purpose of life and what comes out of life. In the most basic of words: this is a coming of age novel. And the reader is coming of age with Miles as we are ever present in his thoughts.
Unlike
The Fault in Our Stars which spends much less time on Hazel following the aftermath of Augustus' death, Green spends just as much time after the death (sorry it's impossible to talk about without actually saying what
it is) as before the death. The effect is that you go through the grieving process just as Alaska's friends do. You are just as shocked when brought to the gym, and you spend the rest of the novel intermittently mourning the loss of Alaska and trying to figure out
why.
While he's attending classes and learning the traditional topics, Miles also spends a lot of time outside the classroom smoking and drinking, and just getting up to mischief. The dichotomy between the "Weekend Warriors" (the rich kids) and Miles' group of misfits leads to typical strife and conflict that you find in any teenage novel. The blatant drinking and smoking that Miles participates in is unusual in most teenage novels, though, and Green's reason could be as simple as he had done this in boarding school as a teen, and as complicated as the drinking and smoking are symbols of Miles being active rather than being passive. Miles taking risks and living life
.
Green contrasts Alaska and Miles as one who cannot
stop and one who cannot
start. Green acknowledges that both states aren't healthy, and one must find a happy medium. Miles is attracted to the personality of Alaska because of her wild abandon, and because Green loves a good old teenage romance. Each of the band of misfits is wonderfully fleshed out, and even the antagonists have moments of redemption (such as The Eagle and some of the Weekend Warriors). After the death of Alaska, Miles and his friends are forced to face their lives head on and actually
think about their actions, think about their lives and how they want to live them. So enter Green's forte - the philosophical thoughts and discussions. Green loves to talk about the
why of life. To turn ideas on their head, to compare things that are never compared, and to use the words of others to bring about his message.
One thing bothered me a bit though. I understand the death is such a powerful way to get people to think, to feel moved and to bring out emotions. Death is so powerful in itself that it doesn't take a lot of work to get it to work for you in a novel. And John Green goes about it in a wonderful way by leaving the reader, and the characters never knowing if Alaska really killed herself or if it was an accident (because that not what really matters in the story). But is death always necessary? Death is unknown and mortality is always lurking in the back of our minds, but are there not other things? Reading a book in which one of the main characters dies always leaves a reader emotionally drained, and in my case unable to really process the rest of the novel. In his other novels Green does not kill off a character and I have to say that I gained more from them because I wasn't so wrapped up in the Romeo and Juliet aspect of the novel. What do you think? Is death the best way to bring out these philosophical conversations?
I'd give this novel a solid rating, though. Green always writes such witty, deep characters that I wish I could meet in real life. And though the stories often have some aspects that aren't typical, they hit close enough to home to resonate with the reader. He provides a fresh perspective on a lot of depressing topics, all the while keeping with the theme of a teenage novel of a romance at a boarding school. And he's got some of the best one-liners I've seen in a while.
And that was as rambling and non-traditional review-y as I've ever seen. Have you read any of his works? What's your favorite book right now? Do you even read?
Environment Tip #9: Give and receive books. Instead of buying new ones all the time, pass them around, loan them, gift them, and get some in return. Share the love.
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