Book: Looking For Alaska
Genre: Banned/ Challenged
Author: The Fantastic and Controversial John Greene
Summary: SPOILER ALERT!
The story revolves around the young Miles Halter, a sixteen-year-old with a fascination for famous last words. Miles decides to leave Florida and attend a boarding school in Alabama. He feels trapped, depressed, and friendless in Florida, and goes to school in search of “his great perhaps”.
His roommate at boarding school in Chip “Colonel” Martin, a trailer-bred genius. Chip nicknames the skinny Miles “Pudge” and introduces him to Alaska Young, a very sexy, well read, and intellectually gifted teenager with a head full of elaborate pranks. His new friends teach Miles how to drink, smoke, receive blow jobs, escape punishment, and understand people. Most importantly, he begins to fall in love with the wonderful and frantic Alaska.
After a night of drinking, Alaska drives away from school and dies in a crash. Miles and Chip, both grieve for their lost friend and wonder if she committed suicide or was killed accidentally. They interview the cops, her college boyfriend, and anyone that might have the answers. Both boys also feel guilty because they were the last people to see her alive and did not stop her from driving drunk.
Ultimately, Alaska’s death is unsolved.
Thoughts and Opinions: This is an excellent book.
John Green’s most infamous novel has been challenged for containing chapters that deal with intense subjects like underage drinking, drug use, smoking, and teenage sexuality, but I think that those controversial things are tempered (and made lighter) by the sheer volume of comical dialogue and characters that are so well developed that readers actually become emotionally attached.
John Green himself as defended the book and has mentioned that all of the “sex scenes” in the novel are silly and frank. Interested readers can find out more information about John Greene at this site
http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers
On a separate note, it is extremely rare for a book to make me sob, but I cried for a good twenty minutes after the description of Alaska’s death. I cried again when I read the paragraph that John Greene wrote about the way teenagers think about death.
“When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.“
This book is simultaneously silly, comical, light, heavy, and deeply philosophical.
Read Alikes: Rats Saw God AND Thirteen Reasons Why
