Looking For Alaska

I actually like John Green romance novels for their honesty about teenagers. That's why I praised Paper Towns for how ridiculous the plot was, but also how easy it was to place a character like Q in all of us teenagers or Margo in the girl next door that you've somehow fallen in love with, even though you've drifted apart. I remember that's why I didn't like The Fault in Our Stars that much.. Well I liked certain aspects of it but not the whole book because the writing of the characters felt too mature. Like even though Hazel and Gus both have their faces buried in books all the time teenagers don't really talk as witty as they do. I have a similar problem with this book, but somehow the writing style feels a bit more justified? It might be because the writing style juxtaposes how impulsively the characters act and kind of makes it seem like they have more thought going on than they actually do express.
I love the way that some writers, especially YA writers, don't forget what it really means to be an awkward, bumbling teenager trying to grow up too fast. Because there's something so beautiful about how messy adolescence is that keeps me reading YA romance novels. Also the fact that I'm currently a teenager and I empathize better with these characters because I'm living/have lived through a less dramatized version of their experiences and I know what it feels like.

The cover:

Miles Halter wants to get out of his high school as quickly as possible. He chooses to go to Culver Creek boarding school because he's tired of being a misfit, of having to drag through every day of school because he just does not have friends. Francois Rabelais' last words were, "I go to seek a great perhaps." Miles goes to boarding school in rural Alabama looking for his "perhaps". 

And he finds it in the form of a ragtag group of friends who smoke and drink and have each other's backs. There's his roommate Chip (or the Colonel) with his strong math skills and odd habit of drinking vodka with milk, Takumi the Japanese boy with a talent for rapping, Lara the Romanian exchange student, but most of all, there's Alaska Young. Everything about her is so mysterious and so awe-inspiring for Miles that it's love at first sight, from her looks, her personality, to the way she plans the best pranks. 

But one fateful night, the image of camaraderie they had falls apart and the fallout leaves Miles and the Colonel to try and sort out the pieces. Who on Earth even was Alaska Young and how much did they actually know about her?

My thoughts (EXTREME SPOILERS AHEAD):

There's a lot to unpack here. Maybe let's go from back to front?

Is it just me or does it feel like Miles learns nothing as a result of the whole book? I think that from the moment he meets Alaska, he's just pining after her. Even while he's dating Lara. Even at the cost of driving the Colonel and Takumi away from him. Yeah, Alaska's got some nerve and she's a pretty cool girl, but how much of it is a product of Miles romanticizing her and Alaska romanticizing herself. There's that quote from this book that I've seen everywhere looking for materials to write this review on and it's "The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive." But doesn't it feel like Miles just continues to torture himself over Alaska's death? He's got his head in the "what ifs", literally daydreaming about marrying and having kids with her, while he can't get himself to accept the fact that she is dead and that those daydreams will stay that way. He didn't just lose Alaska that night, he lost her and all of his fantasies. I think that's the most shocking part for Miles and the fact that he can't just keep ignoring reality. John Green takes us through all of the stages of guilt so beautifully through Miles and the Colonel, but it feels like Miles just made a full loop around while the Colonel has just accepted that she's gone and that he can't put the rest of his life on hold for that. Maybe the point is that people grieve differently and examining how two different people approach it brings a perspective to it that wouldn't be there if he had just said it. 

I guess to Miles, Alaska was everything he wished he could be and more, so the daydreams aren't just about him not dealing with her being dead, but they're also a coping mechanism to distract him from the fact that he needs to work on his personality like mad. His problem is that he isn't assertive. He literally doesn't start dating Lara until Alaska sets him up with her because she thinks he needs a girlfriend. My friend actually pointed out that there's no mention of him ever initiating any plans that they make. Literally all of their hangouts are the Colonel or Alaska getting an idea or just getting bored and dragging Miles out to the smoking hole or hanging out in Miles and the Colonel's room. And even the final prank, the Colonel initiates it and Miles just does most of the planning so it looks like he's taking a more active role in the interest of keeping Alaska's spirit going.   

Going along with that, there are 2 really good quotes from Takumi that kind of sum up what I'm trying to say here in terms of Miles and his obsession with his daydreams of Alaska. Basically at this point Takumi and Miles get in a fight because Miles is just insensitive and kinda forgets the rest of his friends after the incident to just brood over Alaska. 

The first one: "Like you really want to know the truth? Or like you want to find out that she fought with him and was on her way to break up with him and was going to come back here and fall into your arms and you were going to make hot, sweet love and have genius babies who memorized last words and poetry?"

The second one: "I'm not pissed at you for letting her go. But I'm tired of you acting like you were the only guy who ever wanted her. Like you had some monopoly on liking her."

(2 bonus quotes that made me smile: 

"I just did some calculations and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit" ~The Colonel

"I hope you didn't bring the Asian kid along thinking he's a computer genius. Because I'm not." ~Takumi)

In my honest opinion, was Alaska's death a suicide? No. As Miles and the Colonel's research points out, Alaska was very drunk (a .24 BAC is bad. Very bad. Like you could unintentionally kill yourself while trying to do normal things kind of bad) and already not thinking too straight because she immediately started crying while talking to Jake and ran out. I think it was a suicide in the sense that she "killed" herself, but not a purposeful one. She was drunk and sad and hated herself for missing her mom's death anniversary. There was no planning involved. She didn't talk too much about death in general, let alone in a distinctly positive or negative way. And I appreciate the choice to keep her death so shrouded in mystery. It was a fitting end that we will never know what was going through Alaska's head when she died the same as her friends won't and so we just need to give ourselves time to grieve, accept that she's dead, and move on. I think that part is playing with the idea that there's a certain mourning process that we go through as well, as readers looking into the story.  

(Age Rating: 16+)

This book is mature. It's not for young kids (really even young teenagers) and I'm not going to try and sugar coat it. It's got mature language, mature content, a mature premise. It's arguably the most controversial book I've ever reviewed and honestly I'm glad I read it for all the notoriety it got upon being published. (By the way, this was John Green's debut novel, like imagine yourself finally getting this novel published and it becomes a bestseller and such a hit only to get completely shit on by people your age who feel uncomfortable about a book that wasn't even targeted at them for the sake of "the children") The only other "banned" book I've ever reviewed was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian three years ago and that one paragraph about masturbation that people primarily complain about feels like nothing here.

More than the language, arguably the most controversial thing about its book is its unashamed portrayal of young adults having sex for the first time. I kind of hesitate to call it that actually, but ok we'll go with that. John Green has defended that scene multiple times, calling in "wholly unerotic" and somewhat mocking the adults that are scared of putting this book in a public library for fear that teenagers will read a book that describes something that nearly all of them will experience at some point or another in slightly more detail than the average romance novel. That's where you have to keep in mind that this book does not belong to the traditional romance novel genre, even though the plot and major conflicts center around romance. It doesn't exist as a vehicle with a self-insert narrator that (primarily) teenage girls can use to pretend that they have a handsome boyfriend (I guess in this case it's teenage boys pretending they have an amazing girlfriend?). But back to that particular scene, honestly, without it there's quite a bit of development of Miles' character that wouldn't have happened because of it and if anything, it proved to Miles that he was more attracted to Alaska and the fact that she was so "cool" and so "experienced" over Lara who genuinely seemed to like him. It's a genuine teenage conflict expressed through a genuinely teenage lens. And I agree about the scene being unerotic (because the whole book was never written with the intention of fulfilling a reader's fantasy and second of all that would be disgusting because literally all of the main characters are underage) and stepping back to see that it actually advances the plot a lot better in the direction that it takes in the second half than just a conversation or minor detail.

((If you made it this far, thank you for putting up with my rant on this book! I swear the day after I finished reading it, I had a long chat with my friend who recommended it to me and a lot of the points here are the points of the discussion we had.))

((Let's see when I get around to posting it, but I have some books by Ned Vizzini on my nightstand and oh boy do they both look fun. It's a different style for me, but based on what I've heard about Be More Chill, I'm excited about reading them! Happy Reading!))