Book Review: John Green – “Looking For Alaska”

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .

After. Nothing is ever the same. (Source: amazon.com)

ATTENTION: This post might contain spoilers.

Just WOW. Once again.

It has been a long time since I read a book in less than a day. But this particular one’s structure  made it inevitable for me to read slowly, due to the simple fact that it contains only two parts: “Before” and “After”. And while reading the “Before” part, you just go on and on, because you get this weird feeling that there is a reason behind the “After” part, that there is something bad going to happen, and in my opinion, it’s a primary instinct that you just need to know what it is – if it hurts your feelings or not.

Once again, the main female character in John Green’s book is a fierce, energetic, young woman who mostly lives in a little bubble of her own, which shows itself in the way she behaves around the ones closest to her – like Alaska Young. She’s described as someone who is easy to be around, who draws you in, lets you have a positive look on the world despite all the bad things in it. And then there is Miles Halter, the other protagonist. Miles is everything a boy/girl these days probably doesn’t want to be: nerdy, quiet, unpopular. But in my opinion, that is what makes him loveable to the reader, what makes someone warm up to him (I hope it’s not just me!). It’s funny how Green manages it with just a few words, right at the beginning, to draw his readers in – it’s an ability not many writers have nowadays, sadly. And I have to admit, these kind of characters he writes about slowly  become my favourite kind of characters, because personally, it has never been so easy for me to empathize with characters as it is when I read his books.

One of the most interesting things about the story is maybe the character development that runs from the beginning right to the end. Miles, at first a shy, quiet person who only leaves his home to find his “Great Perhaps”, turns more and more into a more self-confident young man, and it’s funny how at the end you imagine him right infront of your eyes, being all grown-up as if years have passed since he came to Boarding School – though it’s actually hardly 12 months.

Alaska Young, on the other hand, keeps being a mystery from the first page, when she’s introduced, until the very end, when Miles finally gives up on understanding her for the sake of his own happiness. Throughout the book, she’s described in ways that makes the reader almost scream with frustration (e.g. one moment she and Miles spent a “date-like” evening all alone together, the next day she pretty rudely blocks him off for no particular reason); and still, it doesn’t change how the reader (or me, personally) thinks of her. Even more, I think that all the mysterious and inexplicable mood swings keep the storyline going – you practically wait for an explanation for all this, because…well, because there just has to be one, right?

The other thing that made being glued to the pages: the subject of the book. Miles, Alaska and her friends have religion classes, and they are talking about different religions and their view on the world, including their different thoughts on Afterlife. Now this may be a touch subject, because, obviously, it contains conversations about death, and moreover, it forces the reader to think about death, afterlife and his/her own opinion on that matter – especially in the “After” part.

Now, I’ll try to not give away too much, but in my opinion, what John Green did with that part – it was a stroke of genius, and maybe even a slightly psychological trick. Of course it’s kind of unsatisfying that the reader never really finds out what really happened to Alaska, because hands down, who doesn’t wish for Happy Ends in books / ends where everything is cleared up? Then again, I’ve come to the conclusion that the maybe unsatisfying events in that second part of the book were intended; are a way to make the reader think about themselves. If you personally think that what happens to Alaska was self-inflicted, then it might throw a kind of disturbing light on yourself, maybe even up to the point where you question your own life. And if you are that kind of reader that just thinks “A lot of things happen for no reason, you can’t stop the inevitable.”, then it seems you’re happy with yourself, your life and everything and everyone in it, which is – obviously -, the better of the two trains of thought.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is, I love how John Green kind of plays with his readers. He lets them make up their own mind, he doesn’t just put answers inside of their heads to satisfy them, no, he gives everyone the possibility to find their own solution, and, in doing so, their own satisfaction with how the story turned out. The book doesn’t even let you go as soon as you’ve finished it (an ability that all of Green’s books carry with them), because due to the end that has been chosen, it may pop back into your head every now and then. And isn’t that the best thing about good books?

Yet another masterpiece of modern literature by John Green, highly recommended.