Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Fiction
Pages: 305
Publisher: Dutton Books
Publishing Date: October 16th 2008
SYNOPSIS
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew...
MY REVIEW
"Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will. But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."
"Grass is a metaphor for many things: equality, connectedness, death. It's so many things at once that it's bewildering."
"There are a thousand ways to look at it (the strings inside a person breaking when he finally decides to die) maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we're grass - our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from shortage of metaphors. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications."
- Quentin
"I like strings. I always have. Because that's how it FEELS. But the strings make pain seem more fatal than it is, I think. We're not as frail as the strings would make us believe. And I like the grass, too. The grass got me to you, helped me to imagine you as an actual person. But we're not different sprouts from the same plant. I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well - but never quite perfectly, you know?
Maybe it's more like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like, each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen--these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other."
-Quentin
"I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another person well, but you never quite perfectly understand them." - Quentin____________________________________________________________
The plot teaches us a lot about life and death; and how we have a choice over how we live our life and see the future. Margo quotes Emily Dickinson, "Forever is composed of nows." It gives us the clear picture the author is trying to create: live in the now and don't stress about the future.
We all live like Quentin, having a lame ass goal in life: a bright future. But what we have to do to achieve that? Struggle. We have to limp through school and score good grades so that we'll get into a good college; then we slither through college to end up at a job we most probably hate but have to keep up in order to sustain a good living; then we save money to send our children to school so that they follow the same routine. We never once stop to think what will happen if we leave these Paper Towns and paper people to make a new happy life where we're a new happy individual.
I think that we're following routine way too much and pressuring ourselves into thinking about the future more than living in the moment. Honestly, how many of us today really enjoy what we do? We need to stop and analyse what we want to do, what we're passionate about, what will make us happy, and what will make our future bright without hindering our joy of today. Routine is familiar, boring. We need something challenging once in a while, a change.
Then there's the main theme: metaphors. You can choose to be whichever metaphor you want: Margo's strings, Whitman's grass or Quentin's cracked vessel. Everything has its own implications. You can either be a broken person; an optimist who believes that a person keeps living as long as they are safe in the heart of another who is alive; or the vessel (people) gets cracked, damaged which is inevitable. Once the damage is done, its too hard to go back. We lose and fail and hurt each other. But this is when we get to see another person as they are. Only when a person cracks open they see themselves in clear light and are able to see through the cracks of other people.
I agree with all three versions shown by John Green. I don't think I can rule out even one of these observations. Yes, a person falls apart when all the strings inside him break. Yes, we keep living in the hearts of those who love us. And yes, once cracked we are easy to comprehend.
That's what I learnt from this book. I don't know whether I've completely missed the point John was trying to convey or have over-thought it. But what I've understood from it seems valuable. That's the beauty of words, isn't it? It takes different forms and meanings. It could mean two completely different things to two different individuals.
Also, the story not having a "happy ending" where Quentin and Margo get together is one of the specialities of the book. It shows us the reality instead of the fantasy movie endings. They're just teenagers trying to find themselves and the portrayal of these characters were so real to the point I could honestly relate to it without having to imagine myself as being in a fictional world. That's the magic of this particular book. It shines light on reality and shows us what people are really made of, is something we really can't define.
For some reason, if you haven't read it yet (seriously?) add it to your to-read list here
My Rating: 5/5
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Green's first novel, Looking for Alaska, won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel, Paper Towns, is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. In January 2012, his most recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars, was met with wide critical acclaim, unprecedented in Green's career. The praise included rave reviews in Time Magazine and The New York Times, on NPR, and from award-winning author Markus Zusak. The book also topped the New York Times Children's Paperback Bestseller list for several weeks. Green has also coauthored a book with David Levithan called Will Grayson, Will Grayson, published in 2010. The film rights for all his books, with the exception of Will Grayson Will Grayson, have been optioned to major Hollywood Studios.
In 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays. They still keep a video blog, now called "The Vlog Brothers," which can be found here
In 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays. They still keep a video blog, now called "The Vlog Brothers," which can be found here
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnGreenfans/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/johngreen
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