I’ve just finished this novel and I’m not sure where to begin, I’m in that post-John Green book phase where you finish the book and you need to sit back, look at the cover and go “whoaaa, that just happened”.
Looking for Alaska is about a teenage boy, Miles Halter, who moves to boarding school, voluntarily, in his search for “The Great Perhaps”. He is unsatisfied with his life in his home town and has a desire to move to a different place with different people in the hope that he can begin to live a life that is more significant than the one he currently has.
Miles becomes friends with his boarding school roommate Colonel and his friends Alaska and Takumi. The school’s pupils are obsessed with pranks and there is a constant prank battle between the scholarship kids, Miles and his friends, and the “The Weekday Warriors” the richer classmates who attend the boarding school but go home on weekends.
Looking for Alaska is a story about so many things, a teenager’s coming of age story, his venture’s into his “Great Perhaps” without even realising it, love, unreciprocated love, loss, death and the famous John Green question “what about those who are left behind?”.
Whatever The Fault in our Stars and Paper Towns did not explore, Looking for Alaska went there. While reading Looking for Alaska I felt as if I was re-reading both The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns but then Looking for Alaska would go somewhere that John Green’s other two novels did not go and I was pulled back into Looking for Alaska.
This was one of those novels that have so many amazing moments that you know you’re going to be quoting from the book weeks after you’ve finished it.
I might have slightly spoiled the Looking for Alaska experience for myself by watching booktalks before I read the novel, so don’t under any circumstances read or watch spoilers before you read the book, go into it blindly and let Looking for Alaska shock you.
Looking for Alaska by John Green is one of those novels that reminds you that it’s okay to be young and not have all the answers, to feel lost when you’re supposed to know what’s happening, and constantly reminds you that you’re old enough to know better but young enough to do it anyway.
Favourite quotes:
- “you never get me. That’s the point”
- “if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane”
- “it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes”
There were so many other moments, some four page experiences long, that I loved, but I’ll let you read Looking for Alaska yourself and you can stumble upon them.