Flight into Fantasy

Title: Looking for Alaska
Author:John Green
Genre: contemporary YA fiction
Reason for Reading: I know for sure that both Renay and Nymeth have read and loved this book. I want to say that Kailana does, too, and I trust these women’s reading tastes.

Synopsis:

Before. Miles ‘Pudge’ Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave ‘the Great Perhaps’ even more (François Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . . After. Nothing is ever the same.

Other Takes:

• Nymeth

• Valentina
• An Adventure In Reading

My thoughts: Like everyone I have spoken to about this book, I loved it. I have a soft spot for boarding school stories, probably because boarding schools still hold a certain romantic mystique. But Harry Potter this is definitely not.

I loved the characters. From Pudge, whose thing is memorizing people’s last words and who is so very adorkable, to the Colonel, genius, prank mastermind and scholarship student, to Alaska herself, I had a very clear picture in my head of who each of these kids was. I loved their interactions with each other, and I loved the pranks they pulled. Alaska in particular reminded me of a girl I went to high school with, and I loved that particular pleasant memory getting dredged up. I especially liked that these kids felt like real teenagers. They’re all brilliant, but I never felt they were self-important, and I liked that the things they did, like smoke and binge drink, are treated almost casually. This isn’t an issue book the way some YA novels can be, and I was grateful for that.

The plot is fairly low-key, and largely centers on a pivotal event in the lives of Pudge and his friends which I can’t reveal because that would be spoilery. This event changes all of them, Pudge most of all, and I appreciated the sensitivity and realism Mr. Green brought to his characters.

Reading this book was a complete and unadulterated joy. I wanted to savor it, because I didn’t want to leave the Culver Creek kids, but at the same time, the pages fairly flew by, and I know I stayed up way too late because I was unable to put it down. There were places where I cried with laughter and places where I wanted to bawl with the characters.

Final Thoughts: this book is marvelous. I credit it for keeping me on the YA kick I’ve been experiencing lately. It is beautiful and poignant and sad and smart and authentic, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I don’t think I am expressing the epic awesome that is this book, and don’t think I should even try any harder, for fear that I will tread deep into the territory of unabashed fangirldom.

Final Grade: A