Poudelivre

I’ve heard a lot of John Green and his books and I thought it was time for me to read one and see for myself what all the fuss was about. I chose Paper Towns, with a pretty clear view of the story, or at least so I thought. It’s funny how I always seem to believe a book is about one thing when it really is about something completely different. Paper Towns was no exception.

Now, Paper Towns is about Quentin, also called Q, who’s in love with the girl next door, the super awesome Margo Roth Spiegelman. They were friends when growing up but quite suddenly (after a dead-guy-on-the-playground incident) Margo stopped talking to Q and they grew apart. Now they’re just a few weeks away from graduation when Margo suddenly knocks on Q’s window in the middle of the night, asking if he can help her on a revenge mission she’s on. It turns out that Q is in for the night of his life and he feels very excited for the prospect of seen Margo the morning after in school. But when he shows up, she’s not there. At all. It turns out that Margo is missing but Q soon learns that she has left clues to be found. Clues for him to find her. Q invites his friends to help him on the search and they’re soon roaming around Orlando, trying to catch they’re not entirely sure wants to be caught.

I, for some reason, thought that Margo had been kidnapped or something of the like, so I was a little surprised when I started reading and soon figured out that that was not the case. Instead, Margo is more of a free-spirit kind of girl and I had some problems understanding her for the bigger part of the book. It wasn’t until the end that I saw her clearly and understood why she did the things she did.

It was the first time I read something by John Green and his way of writing bothered me for some reason. It was light and fast flowing and I laughed from time to time, but sometimes everything was just a bundle of words and things the characters said. I got confused more than once and found myself feeling dizzy and confused because I could just not figure out who said what. I’m sure a lot of people like the way Green write, but I didn’t like it, it was be too blurry and obscure, not all the time, but too much of the time.

More than once did I think “This is a weird book and not in a good way”. Maybe that was because I thought it would be different, but nevertheless, it was weird. And not in a good way. I didn’t entirely like Q and Margo was strange for the bigger part of the book and some of the other characters were just too much. Though it had some bright spots, I laughed and it was actually funny or I pondered on something someone said and all of a sudden I saw things in daily life in a whole new way. The end lit up the whole story and really got me to think. So it wasn’t a bad book, not really. It just wasn’t what I expected and it just wasn’t really a book for me.