Paper Towns
John Green
Dutton Books, 2009
Genre: Realistic fiction
Read if: You want a complex and thought provoking read (with a lot of pee jokes).
Best for: High School aged teens, adults, and anyone else who's interested in the human experience (and pee jokes).
If you like it try:
Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson
How i live Now by Meg Rossoff
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Rating: 5/5
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.
-Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
At the age of ten, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen and his neighbour Margo Roth Spiegelman, find a dead body in the park. Too young to make full sense of the event, but not young enough to forget it, Margo concludes that the man must have died because "maybe all the strings inside him broke."
Years later, Margo and Q still live side by side, but have very separate lives: she is a living high school legend, known for her free spirit and barely believable capers, and he is just another face in the crowd. But a night of wild pranking, followed by a disappearance leads Q on the trail of a mystery that changes everything.
Paper Towns is about many things: a mystery, Walt Whitman, the possibility of the future, Orlando, Black Santas, love, and how hard it is to pee during a road trip. But at the heart of it all, this novel is a thoughtful exploration of what it means to try and really imagine another person. The idea that it is both impossible and imperative to imagine the other fully is what makes Paper Towns a very moving and worthwhile read.
I have been a fan of John Green for a while, having read both his previous books (Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines). I think Green's greatest strength as an author is that he is able to be both really funny and very emotionally honest simultaneously. His books carry big laughs and big ideas, and this latest effort carries the biggest yet, with the most success. This book will appeal to older teens (and adults too) who want a funny and thoughtful book that will stick with you long after its finished.
YA Reads Special Feature: Reading 2.0
I experienced Paper Towns in an unusual way before I had even read it. As I have mentioned before in posts, Green is one half of a youtube project known as Brotherhood 2.0. Green was writing Paper Towns during the project, so several of his vlog posts discuss the writing process of the book. After the novels release, Green did several vlogs answering reader questions about the book.
The cynic in me wondered whether this was partly a marketing ploy, and while selling the book is obviously an element, I really think Green cares about his readers and is interested in connecting and interacting with them. Being able to both see the glimpses of the writing process and getting questions answered about the finished product adds another dimension to the reading experience, one that I think is ultimately positive.
