Paper Towns - the Full Review

So I have two updates for you guys. The first one is that I’m on vacation from school for a week, and so that I don’t spend the whole time watching reruns of Friends and old vlogbrothers videos, I’m going to update ramblingsofacinephile every day. And each posting will be a full legitimate post, not the random plugs for halfgiant that I’ve been giving you. So I’d much appreciate it if you give me suggestions for posts in the comments, because coming up with a new idea every day is hard. The second update is that despite having already started my journey through Paper Towns as a review series, I have to cut it short because I wound up reading the rest of the book in one sitting. As a result I’m just going to write a full review of the book as my first post of the week. Here is the review:

The Summary:

Paper Towns is a novel written by John Green in three parts and a prologue. The prologue has been extensively covered here, so I won’t go into it too much in this review. The first part however is mainly concerned with a brief nocturnal adventure with our protagonist Quentin Jacobsen, also referred to as Q, and his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman. Margo shows up in Q’s bedroom one night and whisks him away to help her get revenge against her cheating boyfriend and Margo’s friends who didn’t enlighten her as to her boyfriend’s licentious actions. This adventure is a fun one that draws the reader into the lives of these characters and allows us to see Q’s feelings for Margo develop. And yet, just as we become intrigued with discovering who Margo has grown up to be, the night is over and Margo leaves town, supposedly never to be seen again. Thus concludes the first part of the book.

The second part is concerned mostly with Q’s attempts to find Margo based on a string of loosely connected clues Margo leaves behind for Q to investigate. This part of the book is mostly comprised of Q’s stream of consciousness ponderings, which provide insight into the way Q sees the world. Furthermore, the segment consists of lots of setting development, introducing us to Q’s parents and showing us the everyday facets of Q’s life. The primary effect of this setting development is that we the readers get to see what it is that shapes Q as a human being: the way he sees the world, how he spends his free time, and what he truly values (which oftentimes is just as selfish as you’d expect from a teenager: Q often focuses on things that satisfy his own desires far more than they do his friends’ and hopes to see one of his classmates take off her clothes). After Q has thoroughly investigated Margo’s clues, and thus the little bit of her soul Margo allows Q to see, the second segment concludes with Q discovering where Margo has escaped to and undergoing his own adventure to find her.

To avoid spoilers I will not go into details on the third segment of the book. I will just inform you that it is highly entertaining and I read it straight through from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.

The Spoiler Free Assessment:

Now I was already familiar with John Green before reading this book via his vlogbrothers youtube channel, which did give me a level of referential enjoyment you can only get by having watched John Green talk for several hours. However, I had no clue what to expect upon reading this book, as I had never seen any of Green’s writing beforehand. That being said I was extensively surprised at how well written Paper Towns is. It being a young adult novel, I assumed it would be moderately well written, as it had won a couple awards, but probably nothing particularly special. But no, Green manages to consistently impress with his snappy and witty dialogue as well as his use of internal monologue, on which the novel (particularly the second section) relies heavily. These two things work together seemingly effortlessly to create vastly complex characters and relationships between those characters. Q and his friends feel as if they have been friends for years and Q’s relationship with Margo seems as if the two are rekindling an old companionship. Furthermore, Green paints an environment that matches seamlessly with the characters living in it. Q and his parents’ relationship helps to clarify why Q is the way he is; the paper quality of Orlando helps to explain Margo’s desperation to leave. Additionally, all the characters serve some purpose in the novel. No one is useless. Every character works together to reveal what I believe John Green is trying to say with this novel. And that is that people are complex. And limiting people to single facets of understanding endangers that person’s understanding of himself or herself and works against allowing people to be who they truly are. Q’s constant inner monologue wondering why Margo is the way she is paints her to be this supernatural girl beyond human understanding in Q’s mind, when she is in fact a complex person with feelings and fears and fervor just like Q. Every aspect of the book works to reveal that every character, even basic archetypes like ‘school bully’ and ‘popular hot girl’ are far more than the simplistic shadows they are often portrayed as. A novel in which all the parts work together so seamlessly to convey a message as powerfully as Paper Towns does is, in my opinion, the very definition of an excellent novel.

Five stars out of Five

Things to Think About While Reading:

Rather than end with a spoiler-filled nitty gritty section like I did with my Hunger Games review, I’m going to tie this novel to two other pieces I couldn’t help but think about while reading Paper Towns. The first is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which was fresh in my mind from having to read it for an English class. I couldn’t help but be constantly reminded of Basil’s understanding of Dorian limiting who Dorian could be by Q’s limited understanding of Margo. In both cases, that limited understanding results in creation of an impossibly perfect ideal that leaves no room for human flaw, effectively dehumanizing the character. And while I probably can’t go into the comparison too much without writing a whole essay, it is definitely an interesting comparison to think about while reading this novel (which I wholeheartedly recommend you do). The other thing Green’s novel reminded me of, particularly his exploration of the idea that certain people bring out aspects of other people that wouldn’t otherwise be there, thus increasing the complexity of said person, is a quote from the book The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis that basically states that a person brings out parts of another person’s personality that would not otherwise exist, suggesting that the specific complexities of human beings is highly dependent on the way they interact with each other. That was interesting to think about in conjunction to Green’s book because it deepened the question, “what then happens when instead of bringing out more complexity we attempt to simplify?”

My Favorite Quote:

“I understand now that I can’t be her and she can’t be me. Maybe Whitman had a gift I don’t have. But as for me: I must ask the wounded man where he is hurt, because I cannot become the wounded man. The only wounded man I can be is me.” –John Green pg 298 of Paper Towns