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A review by jenpaul13
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
3.0
Having a "type" in romantic partners is rather common, but all of them having the same name takes that to a new extreme in John Green's An Abundance of Katherines.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
Child prodigy and anagram-happy Colin has a track record of getting dumped by his girlfriends, all of whom are named Katherine. After the nineteenth breakup, he's taking it particularly hard, wallowing in his grief. To rouse him from this, he and his best friend Hassan go on a road trip and find themselves in Gutshot, Tennessee. With an incredible amount of luck, the pair meet a friendly mother and daughter who take them in and employ them to record the oral stories of the town's residents. Using this time to think more deeply, Colin begins to develop a theorem that explains the trajectory of his relationships with the various Katherines. As the theorem evolves, Colin comes to realize that there are more factors to relationships than he ever imagined.
An exploration of the teenage mind processing through the mystery of relationships with some interjections of humor, typical of John Green's writing, this (predictable) story is relatively entertaining despite its characters who feel a bit underdeveloped to be completely realistic and a plot that is stagnant. While the story has its cute moments and is filled with an abundance of convenient happenstances, the general premise seems rather unrealistic: two boys traveling through a more remote area of Tennessee are readily and easily accommodated by a random family on a spur of the moment trip - suspension of that disbelief aside, it was just a bit too convenient, though it did keep the narrative moving forward for Colin's Eureka! moment.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
Child prodigy and anagram-happy Colin has a track record of getting dumped by his girlfriends, all of whom are named Katherine. After the nineteenth breakup, he's taking it particularly hard, wallowing in his grief. To rouse him from this, he and his best friend Hassan go on a road trip and find themselves in Gutshot, Tennessee. With an incredible amount of luck, the pair meet a friendly mother and daughter who take them in and employ them to record the oral stories of the town's residents. Using this time to think more deeply, Colin begins to develop a theorem that explains the trajectory of his relationships with the various Katherines. As the theorem evolves, Colin comes to realize that there are more factors to relationships than he ever imagined.
An exploration of the teenage mind processing through the mystery of relationships with some interjections of humor, typical of John Green's writing, this (predictable) story is relatively entertaining despite its characters who feel a bit underdeveloped to be completely realistic and a plot that is stagnant. While the story has its cute moments and is filled with an abundance of convenient happenstances, the general premise seems rather unrealistic: two boys traveling through a more remote area of Tennessee are readily and easily accommodated by a random family on a spur of the moment trip - suspension of that disbelief aside, it was just a bit too convenient, though it did keep the narrative moving forward for Colin's Eureka! moment.