The Story: Q is in love with the girl next door. But, though they were once childhood friends, the beautiful, daring, so-much-larger-than-life-she’s-practically-mythic Margo Roth-Spiegelman is now the most popular girl in school and seemingly well beyond the reach of the nerdy Q. That is until the night she climbs through his window dressed as a ninja with a list of things they need To Do before morning.
While Q hopes this night of epic pranks will be the beginning of something gooey-wonderful between them, he soon discovers Margo intended it as a grand finale. She isn’t in school the next day, or the day after that. In fact, Margo Roth-Spiegelman has disappeared.
Spurred by the memory of their one kiss, Q sets out to follow the cryptic clues Margo has left behind, and enlisting his few friends to launch a rescue mission that will take them to places far darker than they ever could have imagined.
And Why is it Brilliant? Everything that John Green writes is a-frickin-mazing, but I think Paper Towns is his best yet. On the surface it’s very funny and quirky, at least to begin with, but underneath it’s incredibly, despairingly dark and left me pondering Big Questions. Margo and Q are complex, flawed and funny characters that I absolutely fell in love with and the ending is both cathartic and unsettling. There are no easy answers in this book, no preachy ‘voices of adult authority,’ just a story I want to hold tight against my chest and never let go.
More Like This? John Green has two other novels, An Abundance of Katherines and Looking for Alaska, as well as Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which he co-wrote with David Levithan. He also writes short stories and is the mastermind behind Nerdfighters: http://nerdfighters.ning.com Hopefully he’s busy writing more books because I seriously cannot get enough of this guy. SO FRICKIN’ AWESOME!
Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why has a similar feel, and I lurve luuurve luuuureved it!
Scarlett Thomas’s Going Out, PopCo and The End of Mr. Y – also very witty, lots of word play, puzzles and Big Ideas and just really fun to read.
Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, although the excessive intertextuality is more than a little befuddling.
Simmone Howell’s Notes from the Teenage Underground and Everything Beautiful have a similar style, but the endings are a bit preachy for my liking.
No comments:
Post a Comment