Here’s what John Green has to say about Life and Teenagers
John Green has something interesting to say about teenagers in his book An Abundance of Katherines
Reading John Green is like stepping into a version of your younger self and experiencing the world through those innocent eyes all over again.
Reading John Green is exhilarating! It hinges onto a feeling of catharsis mixed with retrospect and humor.
It’s the perfect combination of words and emotions churned together in order to produce a tasty mash of ‘wordmotions’ (just invented it! Yes, pun intended!)
An Abundance of Katherines is about Colin Singleton, a prodige, who fears that he will be unable to make his mark on the world. Hence, he will end up living a life of no value and insignificance.
His ultimate kryptonite is a series of relationships with ‘Katherines’ who keep dumping him. His best friend Hassan plans a road-trip in order to carry him out of his slumber and make him feel good again. The road-trip ends up being more than just a road-trip and changes both of their lives forever.
The plot may sound dry and boring, even irrelevant, but once you start reading the book it will begin to make sense. Perhaps that’s the strongest aspect of this book — it makes sense, even though the story largely revolves around a simple road-trip, it all still makes sense.
I like to refer to this road-trip as a symbolic birth for our two characters. In a way it shapes them to be responsible adults and teaches them a thing or two about life.
For example, it teaches Colin that no matter how hard he tries the future is eventually going to swallow him up. Thus, living in the present and making most of the time you have now is far more important than worrying about the future. That’s his ‘Eureka’ moment that he’s been craving to have from the start of the book.
Hassan learns to finally grow up, get out of his comfort zone, and work towards something in life. He finally realizes that instead of only ‘taking’ from the world it is time to ‘give’ something back.
This shows the depth that John Green endeavors to provide to his characters. He doesn’t aim to create a bunch of fictional teenagers who go about their lives acting as if they own the world. Instead, he attempts to encapsulate his characters with thoughts and ideas that he wishes to impart onto his readers.
This element, in my opinion, is perhaps one of the main reasons why I like reading John Green — besides being funny and humorous, it leaves you with a something to ponder upon.
Perhaps the only thing that didn’t sit right with me in this book was that it felt dragged at some point; as if the author was trying too hard to stretch the story to reach the two-hundred page benchmark.
I felt that was unnecessary. If the book were shorter, it would have provided a much better reading experience. Albeit, I can’t say that John Green failed at delivering his usual meal of fun, humor, and meaningful storyline…he definitely did!
All in all, I recommend this book to all John Green fans. You’ll definitely like it without a doubt. However, if its your first time reading his books then I would suggest that you start with ‘Paper Towns’ and slowly make your way towards this one. It’s only then, perhaps once you’re accustomed to John Green’s writing, that you’ll be able to see the potential of this book and appreciate it for what it is.
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