Paper Towns by John Green, published by Speak.
Paper Towns is my first TRUE John Green experience. Next is Looking for Alaska which half the quotes on tumblr are from. This book was purely amazing. It took me a little while to get into it, plus some difficulty arranging reading time around my schedule, but around the hundredth page I found myself hooked. Part Three, or around page 230, I was laughing every other page. But by the end of the novel I was just annoyed and pissed off.
This novel is about Quentin, referred to as Q for most of the novel, and his obsession with his next-door-neighbor and long-time crush Margo Roth Spiegleman. One night Margo shows up at his window and convinces Q to join her on an eleven-step adventure. The adventure revolves around justice and revenge for Margo and Q. They bonded, broke AND entered (separate acts, not to be confused with a crime), and rediscovered a friendship they had last established when they were ten-years-old and found a dead man in the park. The next day Margo disappeared and Q began linking together clues to her whereabouts. The rest of the novel follows his obsessive search to find her, dead or alive.
I absolutely loved how John Green explored the idea of paper towns in this novel. When Margo referred to paper towns and herself as a paper girl she meant that they lacked the third dimension. Paper towns are like Pleasantville: everyone goes to school and work. They go to the store, make dinner, make small talk, do what's expected of them, and then go to bed to do it all over again the next day. They don't ponder the meaning of life or go on adventures or speak the truth. They just go through the motions. In her opinion she was a paper girl in Orlando. She fit the role that was expected of her even though it made her empty inside. Paper towns are also fake towns that are placed on maps as a copyright tool by cartographers. If this town is found on maps by other cartographers they have a case for copyright infringement. This becomes relevant to the plot of the novel however I won't explain why.
I don't know if I've ever related to a character as much as I have to Margo Roth Spiegleman. Although I would never do her 11 item adventure or run away from home on multiple occasions I have often felt like a paper girl. I've been to the point where I wonder if I'm living life for myself or for everyone else. I've constantly been put onto a pedestal afraid of falling off and disappointing everyone around me. I've been placed into a box unsure if anyone actually understands who I am beneath the surface. I have wanted to hide out and write for days before, just like Q finds that Margo does inside abandoned buildings.
By far the best part of this novel was the road trip to find Margo at the end of the novel. It literally had me laughing out loud. I can relate to road trips. I've been on many and I love them. I love the endless games, the "are we there yet?" questioning, the fact that someone always has to pee, and the crazy mental state you get to when you lack sleep and have overdosed on caffeine and road-staring. Again John Green impressed me with his talent for writing in the perspective of teenage boys. They were personable and quirky and witty. I probably wouldn't have hung out with them for they played far too many video games for me, plus Ben and Radar were band geeks, however I truly enjoyed reading about them. Margo, on the other hand, went from surprising me to scaring me to truly pissing me off. I hated the ending. Green's understanding of the characters proved to be far greater than his need for a happy ending. This is admirable yet upsetting at the same time.
Favorite quotes: "It is so hard to leave-until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world" (pg. 229).
"it is saying these things that keeps us from falling apart. And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them. The light rushes out and floods in" (pg. 304).
"Yes, I can see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness" (pg. 305).
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