Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

 THE FACTS: 

            Title: Looking for Alaska

            Author:  John Green

            Publication Date:  2005

            Pages:  221

            Round of applause:  2006 Printz Award

SUMMARY:

            Looking for Alasksa opens with the narrator, Miles Halter preparing to leave his Florida home for Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama.  When only two people show up to his going away party, Miles isn’t surprised—he’s never had many friends.  That starts to change when he meets his boarding school roommate Chip “the Colonel” Martin—the boy who will ironically dub the stringy Miles “Pudge,” become Mile’s best friend and introduce him to Alaska Young.  “The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young.”  (I’d try to be more original… but the back cover basically sums that part up).  On his first night at Culver Creek, Pudge is kidnapped in the middle of the night by some “weekday warriors” (the rich kids who go home on the weekends), duct taped and thrown in the lake.  After this incident, Pudge is drawn into the Colonel’s friend group even more and becomes an integral part of a prank planning team to get revenge on the weekday warriors.  In the midst of planning and pranking, Pudge falls more and more for Alaska—even as he starts dating a girl named Lara.  It’s hard to summarize the action of this novel without giving anything away… so I’m going to stop… sorry.

E’S 2 CENTS:

            Love and obsession.  Read. It. Now.  I had a really hard time trying to write a summary for this book—And I always think it’s a good sign when I want to talk more about the novel and the characters than recap what happened.  John Green does several things incredibly well.

1.     I wanted to keep reading and reading.  Each chapter is labeled ___days before or ___days after, counting down to and away from one central, life-changing event.  I wanted so badly to know what was going to happen on the day.  I suppose that convention loses some of its appeal after you know what happens (aren’t you glad I didn’t spoil it for you?), but I still things it’s a great way to structure a novel.

2.     The main characters are full, intelligent and compelling.  I wanted to get to know them more.  Pudge was especially interesting to me—an excellent pick for a narrator.  Pudge isn’t a “weekday warrior,” but his family and/or economic problems are limited unlike Colonel and Alaska.  In many ways he brings a neutral lens to the pre-established biases his friends have about Culver Creek.  He is inexperienced with many things (from the social structure of his new school to drinking and smoking) and allows us to explore and experience such things for the first time.  Pudge is also very intelligent, idiosyncratic (he likes to memorize the last words of famous people for one), and observant.  I was engaged in his story and equally frustrated by the elusive Alaska. 

3.     Ambiguity.  One set of last words Pudge remembers is “ I go to seek a great perhaps.”  Pudge cites this as his reason for attending boarding school, but such a search evolves into a much larger presence in the novel.  All the main characters are teetering on the edge of a “great perhaps,” a great cloud of potentiality—of knowing and not knowing—of seeing through glimpses and trying to make sense of shadows.  We, like the characters in the book, can never know exactly what happens in another person’s experience, their private moments, not matter how well we know them.  I’m glad this novel deals with not knowing—and that it ends with hope.  I don’t want to give anything away, but the way the novel deals with uncertainty is truly beautiful. 

Worth a read.  For real.

--E