Book Review: Looking For Alaska by John Green

Title: Looking For Alaska

Author: John Green

Publisher: HarperCollins India

Pages: 272
Price: Rs 299

Genre: Fiction / Young Adult / Contemporary

Rating: 7/10

Format: Paperback

About the book [from the GoodReads page]

Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. Then he heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, 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, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

After. Nothing is ever the same.

My thoughts:

Once I read the brilliant ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ by John Green, I was eager to pick up another book by the author. Someone suggested ‘Looking for Alaska’ and I jumped at the chance. Though this book is not in the league of ‘The Fault in Our Stars’, it is certainly a good read. I started, finished and reviewed this book in a single day, despite my limited reading hours. That itself tells a lot about it.

Miles Halter’s life has been ordinary and uneventful until he moves from Florida to Alabama to join Culver Creek Boarding School. There he makes friends with the brainy and brawny Chip Martin [called ‘Colonel’ by everyone, who is his roommate], the witty Takumi, and the unpredictable Alaska Young [‘the hottest girl in all of human history’, as Miles puts it]. From that time onwards, Miles' life is a maze of attending classes, studying, playing pranks, smoking cigarettes, drinking booze; while also falling in love with Alaska.

Each one of them has a talent. Miles likes to learn the last lines of famous people. Colonel is good at memorizing things, especially about countries, their capitals, population, etc. Takumi is a rapper, while Alaska just likes being an enigma. She is moody, without feeling the need to explain herself. Alaska claims to be in love with his boyfriend Jake, but she is often flirty with Miles.

The book is in 2 parts – Before and After [of an event]. The story begins at ‘One Hundred and Thirty Six Days Before’ and ends at ‘One Hundred and Thirty Six Days After’, and everything is in-between - excitement, curiosity, love, friendship, trust, guilt, love, loss.

Well, in short, the book was emotional, funny and sometimes also philosophical. It will appeal to you if you like Young Adults genre – the vulnerabilities, the innocence, the mischief and the beauty of young love.

Here are a few of my favourite lines quoted from the book:

“I’d never been religious. But he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, in the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.”

 “You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” 

 “I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.” 

Image source: Flipkart

Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Title: The Fault In Our Stars

Author: John Green

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 316  

Price: Rs 399

Genre: Fiction / Young Adult / Contemporary

Rating: 10/10

Format: Paperback

I had already read such rave reviews about this book on the internet and from friends that the moment I opened the book, I knew something special was going to begin. And it sure did. Reading ‘the Fault in our Stars’ was an emotionally moving experience. It is an extraordinary book and restores my faith in fiction. I am not going to forget it for a long time.

16 - year old Hazel Grace Lancaster’s and 17-year old Augustus Waters’ stars cross for the first time at the Cancer Support Group. Hazel thinks Augustus is hot, while Hazel reminds him of Natalie Portman from ‘V for Vendetta’. He invites her to watch the movie together, she tells him about her favourite book ‘An Imperial Affliction’ by Peter Von Houten, and so begins this beautiful story of love. ‘An Imperial Affliction’, a fictitious book, almost becomes a character in their story with the kind of significance it eventually has.

Their love is magical. When they converse, you feel as if they are complementing their thoughts, as if they are always on the same page and as if soul mates exist. Their conversations are sometimes philosophical, sometimes frothy, sometimes intellectual, but all times in perfect sync with each other. The terrible truth is that you know both of them have very limited time. You don’t want it to end but perhaps the beauty and preciousness of all great love stories is that they are so short.

It is hard not to feel for both sets of parents [extremely likable and loving] who see this young love blooming, although happy that their son / daughter got a chance at love and yet knowing well that someone is going to hurt.

Till 240 pages, I read it at a breakneck speed but after that I intentionally slowed down. I did not want it to end. But it had to, and let me also assure you, it is one of the most satisfying, not necessarily happy, endings I have read.

Be assured that you will be deeply, emotionally invested in this book. When Hazel and Augustus will fall in love, you will have happy tears for the mushy, teenaged, young love, and you will cry buckets when life will take its toll. At least I did. I haven’t cried like this since a long time while reading a book. But this remarkable book is just not a tear-fest, it has humour, playfulness and mush in good measure too, which you would find heart-warming. One tip I want to give you is that start this book only when you have enough time to finish it. If you don’t, you would not feel your heart in anything else. Trust me.

A few of my favourite lines from the book:

“What a slut time is. She screws everybody.” 

“Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.
"Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.” 

“You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” 

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”

Read more quotes here.

And if you have not understood in so many words, READ IT.

Review Book courtesy: Penguin India

Image source: GoodReads

Book Review: My Name is Parvana by Deborah Ellis

Title: My Name is Parvana

Author: Deborah Ellis

Publisher: Hachette India

Pages: 216

Price: Rs 299

Genre: Literary Fiction / Young Adult

Rating: 10/10

Format: Paperback

About the Book [from the blurb]

Close down your school... or you will pay the price. Close down your school or we will kill you.

Locked away by American military soldiers in Afghanistan, Parvana refuses to talk to her captors. Her silence only baffles and angers those in charge, leading them to question the innocence of this young silent rebel, snatched from the ruins of a bombed-out school. Their only clue is her diary and a series of names in it that they hope will help them figure out what happened.

Through Parvana's story, you will see how lives are shattered and scattered like shrapnel in a country devastated by war. You will encounter people waging their own crushing battles: a single mother striving against vicious tradition to run a school for girls; young girls growing up with grimy realities and dreams of free skies; and students struggling to get an education that will give them wings.

Most of all, you will meet, and never forget, a feisty girl who believes that even in the darkest hours of death and destruction, hope shines forth like the desert sun.

My Thoughts:

‘My Name is Parvana’ is the story of a brave, intelligent and spirited teenage girl Parvana. The story is set in war-torn Afghanistan, after Taliban’s rule.

 What I loved the most about this book is the way the story has been laid out for the reader. It starts at a point that instantly hooks you. This teenage girl has been picked up by the American soldiers from an abandoned, bombed-out school with an old bag which contains a half-eaten copy of ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’ and a battered notebook. Nothing makes her say anything. The story moves back and forth in Present and Past until it merges beautifully at the end, and the story takes complete shape.

Parvana’s mother, an ex-journalist, makes educating young girls her goal in life, completely supported by her own daughters. Though the Taliban rule has come to an end, we find that life has not gone back to normalcy. There are people who are still stuck to those philosophies or are afraid to anger the Taliban. Once accosted by some villagers in the market, Parvana tells them fearlessly “you are all living in the past”.

Parvana is an extraordinary girl. She is headstrong and gritty. She dreams of becoming an architect. “What she really wanted was to build things – things people could live in that would make them feel safe and happy...”

She is extremely imaginative. When she is held captive by the soldiers in a cell, her fertile imagination weaves up a lot of situations like she comes up with an idea of printing poems or chapters of a novel on packaging so that soldiers could read the entire book.

Parvana is independent, compassionate, sensitive and strong-willed. She is confident and taking control of her situation comes naturally to her. “I was born to be in charge.”

It is difficult to imagine life of people in war-afflicted areas, how their hopes, their dreams, their normal lives get shattered every day. Each day is a struggle, even for something which should be every person’s right – education.

“Her life had gone from battle to battle, and she was never ever sure that the future would not be terrifying.”

“Afghanistan had so many armies now -the foreigners, the Taliban, the people who hated both the Taliban and the foreigners, the drug people and the people who had their own private armies just because they could.”

This is the story of how Parvana and her family brave threats, challenging circumstances and even resistance from the villagers to fulfill their dream of educating girls, because they truly believe that only education has the power to transform their circumstances. They also embrace anybody who reaches out to them, making them their companions in the journey of life. Despite the setting, it is certainly a story of hope. Because there are people who care; no matter what are the hurdles, the world is still a good place to be in.

This book is meant for Young Adults and therefore it does not dwell too much into the gore and bloodshed. The book focuses on lives and circumstances.

It is a deeply moving book, and one of the best I have read in a long time. All I would say is you have to meet Parvana. You would not forget her. You would not want to.

And for me, I am going to read the much talked about ‘the Breadwinner series’ by the author.

Note: The text in italics have been quoted from the book.

Review Book courtesy: Hachette India

Image source: Hachette India