Author: John Green
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Pages: 272
Price: Rs 299
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.
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.”
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