So I've already talked briefly about another book by John Green on here, but since I recently read Paper Towns for the first time I thought I should give it a once over on here as well. This young adult novel is told from the perspective of a young man named Quentin 'Q' Jacobsen and his adventures, particularly those concerning his next-door neighbour and estranged friend Margo. The book deals with typical teen novel themes such as love, insecurity and high school politics, but also looks into darker elements such as suicide, death and abandonment, both emotional and physical.
Spoilers ahead
I've read several John Green books now and as a fan of John and his brother's incredibly popular YouTube channel 'Vlogbrothers', I think I can safely call myself a big fan of his work. Paper Towns was the third young adult novel published by John, and it exceeded my own personal expectations.
I enjoyed the opening section of the book less than the rest of it, which wasn't a very encouraging way to begin. I think part of my problem was going into this book with absolutely no idea of what it was going to be about, and part one of Paper Towns led me to believe that this was going to be a book all about fun exploits of characters who I already felt overly familiar with - the quirky, perfectly not perfect girl who is teasingly unavailable and clever beyond belief, and the slightly bumbling and geeky but nice boy who trails after her and hangs onto her every word. It's what put me off Perks of Being a Wallflower to an extent, and although it is a perfectly reasonable and valid formula for a story, it's one that I think I've just seen too many times and now leaves a bit of a sour taste behind once digested. There are exceptions to this, the brilliant movie 500 Days of Summer being one of them, which manage to take this trope and turn it inside out and upside down, making it into a very unexpected thing. Paper Towns does manage this in the end, but I feel the beginning dragged just a tad too long on the typically expected story part. I did consider stopping reading at once point, but I am glad I persevered.
Part two of the book is where the real enjoyment kicked in for me. After Margo disappears, even though the focus of the story is shifted to her, it becomes clear how little of the book is really about her. The very characters within the book have no idea what she is really like, each having their own notions of her behaviour and what motivates her, and as we come to find, none of them have it right. Paper Towns reminds me of The Great Gatsby in this way - John Green has spoken before about how much the central themes and story of Gatsby influenced the writing of this book, and in my opinion it is very easy to see where this leaks in. Margo is the same shade of 'self made man' that Gatsby is in that her construction of self relies almost entirely on other people's preconceived ideas of her, and she both thrives and detests this, whilst not having the slightest idea how to live without it. She can become anything and anyone that she is needed to be if she wants to, which doesn't leave much left in the way of her own personal mind space. This is what breaks her eventually, and provokes her sudden departure.
Margo states that she was never expecting to be found, nor did she want to be, and the ending of the book is what sold it for me. Q learns the lesson that I waited an entire book for Miles from Looking For Alaska to learn - people are complex creatures that are not your own personal blank canvasses to project your expectations and dreams onto. Margo Roth Speigelman is not a plot device in yours or any other people's lives, and she resents being used as one, speaking out against it in a way that the other 'manic pixie dreamgirls' of YA fiction have so little opportunity to do. It's beautiful and refreshing and exactly what I needed to hear.
I loved the supporting cast of Paper Towns more than any other John Green book so far I have to admit, and the friendship side of the story felt sincere and touching in places, and just... truthful, in a way. If there's one thing John Green does well beyond anything else, it's capturing the overall atmosphere of being 16/17 and the thoughts, feelings and grand naivety that comes with that. It's tried and tested and he does it better and better with each novel he writes. Marcus, Ben and Lacey are well-rounded fun characters who help the story along grandly.
In the same way that 500 Days of Summer must remind it's audience constantly that it is not a love story, Paper Towns is dragged down somewhat by the preconceived notions of it's prospective audience. In the same way that Q learns to disregard his, the reader is forced to drop their rose-tinted glasses and look starkly at the reality of how much they've been treating Margo like an object to be pursued instead of a person. Gatsby suffers greatly from descriptions of it as a romance novel, and Paper Towns strives to show us just how wrong people can get it sometimes. After all:
'Margo is not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.'
Overall I would give this book 4 stars out of 5
- Natalie
No comments:
Post a Comment