Wednesday 16 April 2014

Looking for Alaska - John Green

A Spoiler Free Bit About The Book

(I tried wording this on my own but I couldn't work out how so here's the real blurb from Goodreads)


Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, 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, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.


After. Nothing is ever the same.



My Review

I think we need to get this out of the way before I talk about anything else.  No, I did not think this was as good as The Fault in Our Stars - but what is?  This is still in my top five books I've read in 2014.  It was perfect and beautiful and powerful and thought-provoking.  But TFIOS took my soul away where Looking for Alaska gave it back.  Soul stirring.  That's the perfect way to describe this book.

So did I enjoy it?  Yes.  Of course I did.  John Green is such a beautiful, beautiful writer.

The boarding school setting isn't new to Teen Fiction but this was different.  I've never been to a boarding school, as fun as it would be to set a book there, I just couldn't do it.  It's one of those places I would find it hard to imagine being.  But I didn't have a problem during Looking for Alaska.  The description made it so easy for me to construct Culver Creek in my head that it didn't matter that I'd never been to a boarding school.  The setting was everything in this book.  It was vital that it be set in a boarding school as nowhere else could this story take place.  The characters lived together and learned together.  It was an amazing dynamic to be thrown into having only gone to school myself for the seven hours a day, five days a week.  Also, usually the American school system confuses me but in Looking for Alaska the actual school work and what year they were in and what exams they had to do wasn't important.  It made it easier for me, a painfully British person, to understand.

Enough about that.  That's got to be the longest paragraph I've written about setting in my life.  My own novels would be lucky to get a paragraph that size!  So onto my favourite thing, the characters.  Now at first I found Miles very pretentious and a little annoying.  I found it odd that he didn't have any friends and didn't appear to care and awful lot for anyone.  But that doesn't mean I didn't like him.  I liked him in that way that I wouldn't want to meet him in real life but I would like to follow his story, if that makes any sense.  Miles grows into an entirely different person during the novel and once he started to change, I started to love him like the other characters.  I found The Colonel and Alaska fascinating and I loved their exchanges with Miles and each other.  I couldn't stop reading when they were on the page.  Each of the characters felt pretentious in their own way but they still felt so real.  We're all a little like that sometimes, it's human nature.  All the characters, even the more minor characters felt rounded and full and real which leads me to the conclusion that John Green can join Patrick Ness as a master of characterisation.

After I got used to Miles and got firmly into the story, I couldn't put it down.  I couldn't think of anything bad to say at all.  I just sat and read and read and read.  One morning I was about half way through and I just sat in my pyjamas with a cup of tea and read to the end.  There was no time for getting dressed.  Not when there was still pages to read.  I was there with the characters, tears in my eyes as they cried.  I was so connected with them, probably because they were so real.

The ending, ah, the ending.  It was so perfect.  The tone was just right, spot on what it needed to be.  I turned the last page and felt this complete, full, bitter-sweet feeling that I wouldn't swap for any other feeling in the world.

So yes, I enjoyed Looking for Alaska on a similar level to TFIOS.  But Looking for Alaska was incredible on a whole other level.


Evaluation

Plot - 10/10 - never read anything like this

Way Plot Was Pursued -10/10 - was as amazing as I expected

Characters - 9/10 - the pretension was a little tiring at first

Style - 10/10 - so beautiful

Pace - 10/10 - couldn't put it down - perfect


Would I recommend it? - Yes, for so many reasons.

Would I look up the author? - Yes, as I said during TFIOS review, I'm going to read everything this man's written.


Where The Fault in Our Stars stole my soul, Looking for Alaska gave it back.


Molly Looby
Author / Editor / Blogger / Reviewer / Wrimo / Movellian / ZA Ready
molly.looby@hotmail.com

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