A review by bookchew
Looking for Alaska by John Green
4.0
This is the second John Green book I've read, and while he's certainly a good writer (and an intriguing personnage in his own right), I did not connect with The Fault in Our Stars, and was thus initially iffy on this novel as well. I find his characters to be a bit too pixie and twee, with just the right dose of cynicism--a bit of bitterness to cut the sweet. Too formulaic to be relatable.
When I began reading Looking for Alaska my first reaction was "oh no, not this again." The characters are so flawlessly snarky, dialogue concentrated down to such a slick and witty repartée (with just a peppering of "likes" and "ums" to sound "natural"), that it reads more like a tediously-edited movie script than like a novel. John Green presents perfectly-packaged characters that allow for easy reading but lack the intimacy and nuance of truly organic character-building. When a character is a bit rough around the edges, Green spells it out. When a character is quirky, clever, and "screwed-up," they are that ALL THE TIME. In their every action, in their every word. This book is thus full of rapid-fire quips, which might work and even be necessary in the shorter form of film, but that rob the reader of the pay off that taking the time to READ and appreciate a character's intricacies provides.
And yet...
Midway through the book, I found that this story was haunting me. So much so, that I had difficulty sleeping while I was reading this book. In Looking for Alaska, John Green seeks to ask, in his words: "questions--big questions about suffering and loss and faith and despair--that could not be answered. And I wanted to know whether it is possible to live a hopeful life in a world riddled with ambiguity, whether we can find a way to go on even when we don't get answers to the questions that haunt us." These are vast subjects, and the realm of YA is a small pond in which to crowd such big fish. But he does it exceptionally well. Seeking to deal with these subjects is tricky territory; one risks veering into the vague, the mystical, the cliché, the downright corny. Looking for Alaska does none of that. It presents realistic instances of extreme pain and despair, asks questions, weighs hypotheses, accepts the inevitability of suffering, and courageously throws its hands up in humble acceptance. This novel admits both the utter lack of meaning of "the labyrinth of suffering" in which we live, and yet offers a touch of gratitude for the small, almost tangential meaning that such suffering provides with time.
Yes, there is perhaps an overdose of "teenage debauchery" (as other reviewers have noted) in this book. It didn't bother me, but I can see why some would be irked to have teens shed in such light. When I was a teen (which was not too long ago), such endless drinking and smoking and "hooking up" was virtually non-existent among my peers. But I did appreciate that Green wrote candidly about these subjects, and that he gave his characters the credit to be able to have these "rights of passage," and to still have some depth as well (i.e. his teens wanted good grades, studied hard, were interested in moral and spiritual complexity). The portrait he paints did not speak to my high school years so much as my university years, but I found myself, despite my initial resistance, recognizing this sordid, cynical, tight-knit community of young people that Green created. And I found myself haunted and ultimately moved by his treatment of the inescapability of suffering and the necessity of acceptance.
When I began reading Looking for Alaska my first reaction was "oh no, not this again." The characters are so flawlessly snarky, dialogue concentrated down to such a slick and witty repartée (with just a peppering of "likes" and "ums" to sound "natural"), that it reads more like a tediously-edited movie script than like a novel. John Green presents perfectly-packaged characters that allow for easy reading but lack the intimacy and nuance of truly organic character-building. When a character is a bit rough around the edges, Green spells it out. When a character is quirky, clever, and "screwed-up," they are that ALL THE TIME. In their every action, in their every word. This book is thus full of rapid-fire quips, which might work and even be necessary in the shorter form of film, but that rob the reader of the pay off that taking the time to READ and appreciate a character's intricacies provides.
And yet...
Midway through the book, I found that this story was haunting me. So much so, that I had difficulty sleeping while I was reading this book. In Looking for Alaska, John Green seeks to ask, in his words: "questions--big questions about suffering and loss and faith and despair--that could not be answered. And I wanted to know whether it is possible to live a hopeful life in a world riddled with ambiguity, whether we can find a way to go on even when we don't get answers to the questions that haunt us." These are vast subjects, and the realm of YA is a small pond in which to crowd such big fish. But he does it exceptionally well. Seeking to deal with these subjects is tricky territory; one risks veering into the vague, the mystical, the cliché, the downright corny. Looking for Alaska does none of that. It presents realistic instances of extreme pain and despair, asks questions, weighs hypotheses, accepts the inevitability of suffering, and courageously throws its hands up in humble acceptance. This novel admits both the utter lack of meaning of "the labyrinth of suffering" in which we live, and yet offers a touch of gratitude for the small, almost tangential meaning that such suffering provides with time.
Yes, there is perhaps an overdose of "teenage debauchery" (as other reviewers have noted) in this book. It didn't bother me, but I can see why some would be irked to have teens shed in such light. When I was a teen (which was not too long ago), such endless drinking and smoking and "hooking up" was virtually non-existent among my peers. But I did appreciate that Green wrote candidly about these subjects, and that he gave his characters the credit to be able to have these "rights of passage," and to still have some depth as well (i.e. his teens wanted good grades, studied hard, were interested in moral and spiritual complexity). The portrait he paints did not speak to my high school years so much as my university years, but I found myself, despite my initial resistance, recognizing this sordid, cynical, tight-knit community of young people that Green created. And I found myself haunted and ultimately moved by his treatment of the inescapability of suffering and the necessity of acceptance.