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A review by jonezeemcgee
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
4.0
4.25
I have been a fan of John Green’s since I picked up a copy of his book “Looking for Alaska” when it first came out. What I fell in love with is John’s honest style of prose. He does not condescend towards teenagers, or only scratch the shallow surface. Teenagers in Green’s books mirror the intelligence and introspectiveness that they often do not portray in other works of YA fiction. Green’s books, much like Hemingway, are also quite quotable. I have found that if you pick up a book of Hemingway’s literary works you can go to almost every page and find something quotable and profound as you can in Green’s fiction.
**There may be Spoilers**
What I Loved: Turtle’s All the Way Down seemed to double down on the aspects of Green that I adore. My copy is covered in highlights of quotable moments, and the way the character of Aza is treated is with the respect and heartbreaking honesty a character of her nature deserves. Here is where I get a bit personal. I hold a Master’s Degree and post Masters Certification in the field of Psychology. I also suffer from anxiety that sometimes leads to compulsive thought patterns. John Green handled Aza’s similar (though her OCD compulsions seem to be her main prognosis) issue’s masterful, respectfully, and with knowledge on both the Clinical and personal levels. So much so that this book had me in tears more often than not. When you are dealing with someone that presents these symptoms it is a much different animal than when you are dealing with them yourself. All reason goes out the window when battling with the “tightening gyre”. John Green did a magnificent job showing this as Aza tries to use the reasoning techniques that she has learned from her therapist and often loses her battle to the compulsion.
Green also touched on what is seen as the selfishness of the disorder (the disorder itself making you obsessed with your own thinking patterns to the point that others are often shut out), how it affects those around you, and how it affects your ability to relate to and deal with others in the outside world. What Green did well showed how this affected her mom, her friends and even being able to have a normal relationship with a potential love interest.
This book does have that almost typical hallmark in any YA piece of fiction where there is a love interest. The romance in YA books about mental illness seem to follow the same recipe of a boy/girl is troubled and he finds a partner equally troubled and together they heal each other. Green’s book seemed to start out with the element of that with the characters of Aza and her potential love interest Davis. However, what Green did well was he did not make either character a savior. He did not break the mentally ill girl from her shell, she was not healed by the power of love and the boy did not find his lost home in Aza. The characters did what often people that are hurting do. They try and connect, and often that connections fail because what books don’t tell you is that relationships are hard if you don’t have a good handle on your own baggage before you try the cumbersome struggle of grabbing on to someone else’s. The relationship crumbled because there was so much personal work that needed to be done.
Where it lacked (or did it):
If I have one criticism of the book it is that it was a bit busy. Often there was a bit too much going on at once between Aza’s struggles, maintaining a friendship, solving a mystery, liking a boy and then you throw in the tuatara. But then again, was this a purposeful choice by the author to show the clutter of trying to get through the plot while all the while being interrupted by Aza’s thought disturbances? I can’t say for sure, but if it was purposeful it was still executed poorly. All the elements together lacked cohesion and made the story seem a bit disjointed. Hence why I ultimately decided to reduce it by almost an entire star.
Overall, I am not walking away from this book without living with these characters for a long while to come.
I have been a fan of John Green’s since I picked up a copy of his book “Looking for Alaska” when it first came out. What I fell in love with is John’s honest style of prose. He does not condescend towards teenagers, or only scratch the shallow surface. Teenagers in Green’s books mirror the intelligence and introspectiveness that they often do not portray in other works of YA fiction. Green’s books, much like Hemingway, are also quite quotable. I have found that if you pick up a book of Hemingway’s literary works you can go to almost every page and find something quotable and profound as you can in Green’s fiction.
**There may be Spoilers**
What I Loved: Turtle’s All the Way Down seemed to double down on the aspects of Green that I adore. My copy is covered in highlights of quotable moments, and the way the character of Aza is treated is with the respect and heartbreaking honesty a character of her nature deserves. Here is where I get a bit personal. I hold a Master’s Degree and post Masters Certification in the field of Psychology. I also suffer from anxiety that sometimes leads to compulsive thought patterns. John Green handled Aza’s similar (though her OCD compulsions seem to be her main prognosis) issue’s masterful, respectfully, and with knowledge on both the Clinical and personal levels. So much so that this book had me in tears more often than not. When you are dealing with someone that presents these symptoms it is a much different animal than when you are dealing with them yourself. All reason goes out the window when battling with the “tightening gyre”. John Green did a magnificent job showing this as Aza tries to use the reasoning techniques that she has learned from her therapist and often loses her battle to the compulsion.
Green also touched on what is seen as the selfishness of the disorder (the disorder itself making you obsessed with your own thinking patterns to the point that others are often shut out), how it affects those around you, and how it affects your ability to relate to and deal with others in the outside world. What Green did well showed how this affected her mom, her friends and even being able to have a normal relationship with a potential love interest.
This book does have that almost typical hallmark in any YA piece of fiction where there is a love interest. The romance in YA books about mental illness seem to follow the same recipe of a boy/girl is troubled and he finds a partner equally troubled and together they heal each other. Green’s book seemed to start out with the element of that with the characters of Aza and her potential love interest Davis. However, what Green did well was he did not make either character a savior. He did not break the mentally ill girl from her shell, she was not healed by the power of love and the boy did not find his lost home in Aza. The characters did what often people that are hurting do. They try and connect, and often that connections fail because what books don’t tell you is that relationships are hard if you don’t have a good handle on your own baggage before you try the cumbersome struggle of grabbing on to someone else’s. The relationship crumbled because there was so much personal work that needed to be done.
Where it lacked (or did it):
If I have one criticism of the book it is that it was a bit busy. Often there was a bit too much going on at once between Aza’s struggles, maintaining a friendship, solving a mystery, liking a boy and then you throw in the tuatara. But then again, was this a purposeful choice by the author to show the clutter of trying to get through the plot while all the while being interrupted by Aza’s thought disturbances? I can’t say for sure, but if it was purposeful it was still executed poorly. All the elements together lacked cohesion and made the story seem a bit disjointed. Hence why I ultimately decided to reduce it by almost an entire star.
Overall, I am not walking away from this book without living with these characters for a long while to come.