Thursday 15 November 2012

Paper Towns by John Green

As much as I enjoyed reading Paper Towns, the first impression I got was that it    was too similar to Looking for Alaska.
Boy falls for extraordinary girl - Girl disappears - Boy looks for girl.
High school setting (but that's obvious as it's about teenagers).
Amazing secondary characters (no complains there).
Puzzle to solve.
Significant literary reference (The General in his labyrinth for Looking for Alaska; Leaves of Grass for Paper Towns).
But after a while, it develops into its own story and there's nothing else to do but sit back and enjoy the ride. Especially the one towards to the end, when the whole group embarks into a hilarious highway race against time. Probably my favourite part in the book.
It's not simply the story and the writing that make John Green's books unique and addictive. It's also the amount of details and creativity that goes into the creation of his characters. You can tell he's had a lot of fun writing them. How can you not have fun when you're making up stuff like a completely drunk teenage who makes a beer sword out of empty cans and then superglues it on his hand so that nobody can take it from him.
It's the little details that makes his books stand out from the rest. It makes you wish these people were in your life when you were a teenager. Even Margo, the girl Q is looking for. The real one, not the idealised Margo. Like Alaska, she's a hurricane, but she's also a human being, and eventually that's what Q needs to realise.

As for me, I still want to read everything that John Green has written.

2 comments:

Bookgazing said...

What have you got left of his to read now?

valentina said...

Well I've only read Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, so all the rest of them! I'm saving them up.