Review of Looking for Alaska

I won’t do my usual long review for this book since I’m on vacation. I’ll have to settle for some scattered insights and random musings.

1.
This is the second book I read on a tablet. It's going pretty well so far. A graceful introduction for reading in the 21st century.

2.
I had a choice between reading this and reading “Love in the Time of Cholera” a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book. I chose this one because it was a YA book and would be easier to read on vacation. The funny things is that a Marquez book I quite liked played a pivotal role in this book. I just happened to read this book twice in the past two years. Serendipity. I like the idea that this book will encourage middle schoolers and high schoolers to try to read more difficult books -- like Marquez and Vonnegut.

3.
This was my first John Green book. I’m a fan of his web series on history. It was a very good novel. However, there are reasons I would pause before reading another one of his books. First, the book reminded me too much of high school. He nailed it, all the way down to the hormonal angst and dramatization of everything. It was hard enough to do the first time. Second, he really nailed the voice of hormonal teenager, like there was a 16-year-old hormonal teenager trying to get out of him.

4.
As a connoisseur of youth in distress books -- Catcher in the Rye, Norwegian Wood, Hamlet, Trainspotting, The Bell Jar (see this if you’re really interested - http://www.thegsj.com/essays-springsu...) -- I’m not sure this one is an automatic classic the way others are. I judged it as a YA novel and not necessarily on the grounds of the others. The novel creates a compelling story, memorable characters, and the book reaches points of greatness easily enough -- but something is missing. See next point.

5.
Compare this book with Norwegian Wood and see where this gets you. There is an easy truthfulness that comes out of that story that is missing from this story. Perhaps the difference is that that story is told from the perspective of an adult looking backward.

To be crass -- there is too much high school in this book; the characters go through emotional peaks and troughs and introspective moments without having to earn them. That strikes me as very high school. Perhaps that’s why I won’t read a John Green book for a while. I can’t read his books unless I’m ready for high school.

6.
Lately, I’ve been doing research on Manic Pixie Dream Girls. I believe Green has said at one point that Alaska Young is the anti-MPDG. I didn’t see that all.

I think that tragic thing that happens to her and her background are supposed to overturn the MPDG paradigm. But I don’t see it at all. Because Alaska Young is seen through the eyes and narrated through an adolescent male, she can’t help but be the impetus for a male coming of age story. Even in her tragedy, she leads him on whimsical journey of self-discovery. In order to truly subvert the MPDG paradigm, the second half of the book would have probably need to have been written in Alaska’s voice. Honestly, this isn't something I could do as a writer. Getting into the mind and heart of Alaska Youngs is difficult. (Hence what makes them magical...)

This doesn’t mean that I don’t like how the book is structured. I’m learning to live with the necessity of MPDGs. They serve a narrative function -- one that shouldn't be automatically dismissed. Unfortunately, by the end of the book, to me, Alaska Young is still a (magical) mystery.