From: Paul W Goldschmidt <goldschp>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:29:07 -0600

OK, I'll dive into this with my brief review I wrote about Looking for Alaska in December:

"Miles Halter comes to Culver Creek, a boarding school in Alabama, with few friends and fewer regrets. His great accomplishment to date is his obsession with people's last words. But his life changes as first he meets his new roommate (the Colonel) and then he meets the enigmatic and emotionally volatile Alaska -- the young woman who would be the Love of His Life if only she would stop making fun of him for it. In this very touching and insightful look at growing up from a boy's point of view, everything is about Alaska. Everything, that is, until After.

"I remain very very torn about this book. I HATE boy books, especially books about boys written by boys. So, I really want to hate this book, but John Green is truly an outstanding writer. You will laugh and you will cry
-- I rarely do when I read, but this was a major exception. I'd ding it if I could, because I really wanted to hate this book, but it deserves every accolade it has gotten."


In my experience, male writers (especially the younger ones) struggle with expressing emotions in writing. Their novels (and the ones written for a young male audience in general) are full of action, full of things being done to things. Rarely do they get below the surface of that to explore the heart -- instead, that is the typical ghetto of the female writer and the "girl book." But Looking for Alaska bursts out of that expectation and really delivers something a bit unusual: a story about boys that really get under the surface of how they think about the opposite sex and about themselves. I'll wager that most of the readers of this book will be girls, but that has as much to do with reading demographics as anything -- boys who read this book will recognize something familiar, whether they are comfortable with those feelings.

In fairness, Green doesn't always succeed as much with his female characters as with his male ones, but one could even argue that that is part of the charm of the novel. Miles's own confusion over Alaska is partly the author's as well. It's as if the novel's title character remains a powerful enigma who defies attempts by both Miles and John Green to pedestal her (and who enjoys mocking their attempts to do so). The Eagle is apparently based on a real person. One suspects that Alaska is as well.

Looking for Alaska has no unusual structure (besides its organization around the "Before" and "After" of the story's Key Event, and - of course - the amusing use of famous last words) and it is placed in the safe tried-and-true setting of the boarding school. On its surface, there isn't much to make the story stand out, but it has a tremendous depth to it and a kind of gritty realism to it that will resonate with adolescents. It also should age well, which is a nice feature in a YA book.


I have not read any of the honor books from this year yet, so I cannot comment on them. If there was a book I really wanted to see on the list this year but which didn't make it, it is probably Boy Proof, which was also funny and quirky, albeit a bit more common of a story.

-- Paul Goldschmidt
Received on Wed 22 Feb 2006 09:29:07 PM CST