Looking for Alaska

Format: Paperback
Genre/Topics: young adult fiction, coming of age tale about annoyingly intelligent private school kids and their struggles, realistic stories of teenage lives with a little bit of intrigue and subversion of expectations
Emotions: exciting & intriguing to start, heart-breaking and frustrating to end

Many folks seem to have the idea that this book ‘glorifies suicide' or is ‘too edgy to feel realistic.' Were you ever an angsty teenager faced with a trauma that left you absolutely shaken? You feel like your life will never be the same (spoiler alert: because it won't!). Trauma comes in many forms and features, and people handle these things differently based on their own personal experiences.

It's sort of wild to me to see people saying these characters feel unrealistic. Yes, the main characters are all sort of typical egghead ‘I read a lot and know things' teenagers. But, and I don't know about you, but I was definitely a bit of an egghead ‘I read a lot and know things' teenager. Knowing that Green was motivated to write this story because of his own experiences at boarding school, I think it's a bit disingenuous to push the narrative that these characters and experiences aren't realistic enough. The characters have flaws, people have flaws. (Lots of them!) Not all flaws are meant to be fixed; how many flaws do you have that you haven't magically fixed via some Great Perhaps journey?

To be fair to folks who read it that way, though, I understand where you're coming from. If I was a decade older, or maybe even a decade younger, I might feel that way, too. I think I'm in a position in life where I can understand that we are the sum of our parts. The main characters may seem superficial and bland, with only one or two specific main characteristics to hang onto (and with regards to Lara and Takumi, I'd be inclined to agree that they are incredibly superficial characters only used to push along the plot), but in the grand scheme of narratives, the storyteller Miles ‘Pudge' Halter is... a sixteen year old with delusions of grandeur (a desire to find his Great Perhaps) and the narrative is dripping with his own perception of events. He's not a reliable narrator with regards to the other main characters, because his own emotions and experiences color those characters' personalities within the confines of the book. We see the characters the way Miles sees those characters. If you see one-dimensional characters, it's because Miles is so stuck in his own head that he can't see people as much more than what they are on the surface, what he sees. To me, this is an incredibly accurate portrayal of a teenager whose egghead is as big as their personal ego.

I say all of this to clarify: these characters felt realistic to me, because I can see myself in Miles. This is a story about loss first and foremost. It's about a teenager who has never experienced much has to experience a lot of things in a short period of time. The ending isn't satisfying. It doesn't feel good. Because life doesn't feel good. People die, and you just learn to live with it. You don't always get closure. Honestly, you rarely get closure. If you are in a place to contend with your own views on loss, this book might be a good read for you. Or it won't be, and you'll feel incredibly strongly in a different direction. What matters is this book makes people feel. And by the way the reviews of this book teeter back and forth from positive praise on high to negative rants and raves, I can tell it definitely makes people feel something.