"What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person."

tunes: Songs for the Wanderer

So, first things first: I'm a sucker for a good opener. “And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one” (p8). I knew right away that I was going to fall fully in love with this one. 

After this, I went through a lot of feelings about this story. One of the first things that caught me, though, is John Green's ability to capture that sweet-but-awkward teenage boy that we know so well. Some of the characters were a bit unrealistic – more extreme than a natural person or too mature for an 18-year-old high school student – but he has got that high school feeling under wraps. “...we rolled down the one window that worked so the world would know we had good taste in music” (p138). God. Who doesn't know that feeling? That thing you think every time but would never admit out loud. I feel like John Green is shamelessly honest and I love that about him. 

Not too far into the book, I got to the point where I started to be really annoyed about Margo. Less at her and more at Green for perpetuating this horrible ideal. Margo is a darker take on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl – impossibly desirable and way too cool to care. She is quirky and mysterious and evasive and you just know there's so much more to her than she shows. In a lot of ways, Margo is the kind of girl I'd always wished I was. In some ways, she is a lot like who I used to be...and more so the more I found out about her. But the problem with the MPDG is that she can't exist in the real world. She is this character we see and fall in love with, but in reality she is so one-dimensional. She is an idea of a person. A perfected, unattainable idea. She's just not a real person. Reading the book, I kept thinking this and I kept feeling annoyed. I've known John Green through Vlogbrothers and I thought he was better than this. And then, beautifully, it turns around. But it doesn't even turn around, it just reveals itself more. Green takes this ideal and just completely exposes it. Not only do you get to see Margo-the-real-person, but you get to see the characters realize that they have created this character of her. You see Q realize that he doesn't really know her, that nobody does. You witness him realize the part he has played in her alienation and characterization. And you get to hear her say that she had a part in this, too. Because the thing about this idea of a person is that it is really appealing. It's a lot harder to be human. And the most beautiful thing about this story is you get to go on that journey with them. You get to fall for it and see it unravel right alongside Q. I went from loving Margo to envying her to wanting them to be together to legitimately wanting her to be dead. And in the end, that made me love the book that much more. 

Paper Towns - Aubrey's initial discussion

     For some reason, when I try to write or talk about Paper Towns everything comes out cheesy and overly sentimental so I apologize in advance.
     It's been a long time since I've read a book straight through in one day, but I started Paper Towns over my morning tea and finished it before dinner.

     Speaking of tea, I tried World Market's jasmine pearls green tea and was pleasantly surprised!  It was wonderfully light and fragrant and floral.  That was my tea for this book (and a while afterwards).  But back to topic...

     Paper Towns reads like half mystery novel and half love letter to the high school me - feeling invisible and struggling with leaving the only world I'd ever known, even if I hated it.  That high school me related to Q and a little bit to Margo, but the latter is more of a stretch.
     Q's obsession with finding Margo drives the story, but at its heart this book is about discovery.  Q discovering himself, what he really wants for his future; discovering his friends and people he thought were enemies; discovering the elusive girl next door that he's dreamed about for half his life.

---Alright, if you haven't finished the book, read no further---

     As much as I enjoyed Paper Towns (and I did), the ending felt anticlimactic.  Through the whole book, I wanted Q and his friends to solve the mystery and find Margo, but it wasn't until they did that I realized that she should have died.  Right alongside Q, I feared she was dead and hoped that she wasn't.  But once they found her, it felt wrong.
     The story opens with Q and Margo finding a dead body and Margo's nine-year old response to it was, "maybe all the strings inside him broke."  Margo's death and Q's discovery of her would've created a lovely symmetry, especially since the night before she disappeared, Margo says that all of her strings have broken.  Instead they have an awkward and angry and then tearful reunion.  Q leaves with his friends while Margo continues with her odd version of running away.
     Even while I write this, I'm slightly conflicted because I cannot imagine the ending where Margo dies and Q finds her and it still works.  Maybe the book couldn't have ended any other way and maybe this ending, even if it felt slightly disappointing, is the most true-to-life ending...
Or maybe I've just been reading too much fantasy lately and wanted a more spectacular finish, regardless of what the spectacle was.