Goodreads Review: Paper Towns

Posted by Phoebe

Paper Towns Paper Towns by John Green

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I was seventeen, I read Fight Club for the first time and fell in love.

It was one of the first truly clever books I’d ever encountered. I was a suburban kid with a mohawk who hadn’t yet been kissed, and yet Palahniuk’s story of adult quarter-life-era disaffectedness spoke to me–thanks in no small part to its gimmicks: the clever haikus, the I-am-Jack’s-whatevers, the twist. But strangely, what I remember best now about the book (eight years since my last reading) is the scene where the narrator first encounters Tyler Durden on a beach. Dreamlike and quiet, the scene emotionally resonates for me even in memory in a way that much of Palahniuk didn’t.

And I should know–I inhaled all the Palahniuk I could find after I finished Fight Club. But by the time I hit Lullaby, it was all becoming very well-worn. The flat characters were starting to seem more like caricatures. The verbal tics started to grate where they’d once delighted me. After that, I tried to read Eggers but he annoyed me, too. A Dutch kid I knew (who charmed me when he described the McDonalds’ arches as “the golden tits of capitalism”) recommended Douglas Coupland to me and I read Generation X and Microserfs and for a moment, the magic seemed to have returned: here were books that were even more beautifully and touchingly written than Palahniuk’s, but whose cleverness didn’t impede the emotional impact; the words hellojed still give me shivers. But I read further into his catalog and found a pattern distressingly similar to Palahniuk’s: characters who quickly become copies of copies of themselves, themes which become flatter and deader with each passing novel, buried under the gimmicks and the man-boyish cuteness.

I say all this to warn you that I’ve generally avoided patently clever novels since then. These days, I find that I’m more interested in emotionally affecting stories than fact-dropping, quirkiness, or cuteness. I prefer plots with some degree of grit and books that feel emotionally real even when they involve werewolves or dragons. This goes doubly true for the YA I enjoy. Give me real, breathing, vital teen characters and the tenderness and rawness of that time period over cute, coy, coolness any day.

I’d seen a few of John Green’s youtube videos before I picked up Paper Towns in an airport book store and felt wary. His arguments and content are sharp and entertaining, but something about the delivery struck me as overly contrived in the very same way that the stapler in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius did. Still, I’d read glowing reviews about how his books made writers I respect very much cry, so I gave Paper Towns a shot, despite my reluctance.

Unfortunately, it was pretty much what I feared it was.

The story of a Floridian high school senior named Quentin who obsesses over Margo, a stock manic pixie dreamgirl, Paper Towns is in many ways a mystery. After Margo disappears, Quentin and his classmates chase a trail of clues she’s left behind, traveling through abandon buildings, reading Walt Whitman, and listening to covers of Woody Guthrie. Though it made for quick reading, I never felt all that engaged in the mystery aspects of the novel; they felt contrived, self-consciously hip, and logically disjointed. In the end, the mystery is largely solved via a deus-ex-machina computer program, which felt like a bit of a cop out.

That didn’t trouble me as much as the characters, though. Quentin himself is flat and bland. His obsession with Margo made him less likable for me, not more, and though he bemoans his psychologist parents’ constant psycho-analysis, in the end, it’s only because they urge him to see his peers as more than one-dimensional figures that he’s supposedly able to experience any growth. This didn’t ring true for me, though; Q tells us he’s revised his view of Margo, but their ultimate reunion (where they promise to visit one another over the ensuing months, and share kisses) didn’t seem to acknowledge her complexities any better than his interactions with her at the beginning of the novel.

Margo herself largely wasn’t worth commenting on. Call her Marla Singer. Call her Clementine. Call her Holly Golightly. Call her whatever you want–because I’m sure you’ve seen this girl before.

The rest of the characters here were largely one-note, too: there’s Ben, the cheesy perv, and Radar, who obsessively edits an online encyclopedia. The novel’s overarching message is supposed to be to avoid characterizing others in a reductive way, but Green relies more on “quirks” than “personality” to define his cast. Perhaps this is meant to show the shallow nature of Quentin, who narrates, but with little more than lip-service to growth, the message here really wasn’t resonant. Certain things about the cast at-large struck me as anachronistic for modern teens, too, notably their musical tastes; the music mentioned here is much more to the tastes of my thirty-two year old husband than any eighteen-year-olds I know.

Finally, and while I’m on the topic of music, as someone who was once a cooler-than-thou Mountain Goats fan myself, I can’t help but think the epigraph quote from Tallahassee, and the inclusion of the Mountain Goats in a scene where the teenagers are driving around adventuring, was a bit off-base. The lyric in question refers to a married couple fighting and drinking themselves to death after moving to a Southern plantation in the hopes of escape their marital problems. The inevitability of one’s problems, and the foolishness of changing ones’ scenery in hopes of outrunning them, is a major theme in Darnielle’s songs (see: not only the Alpha couple, but also the entirety of the far-reaching “Going to . . .” series). And yet Margo is supposedly doing just that–running away from who she was, and apparently mostly successfully. I can’t help but wish, like the English teacher in Paper Towns that Green had looked a little holistically at the lyrics in question rather than cherry picking a line that seemed to meet his needs.

All that being said, I didn’t hate Paper Towns. It’s well-written, if rough around the edges stylistically, and might have been as life-changing as Fight Club was if I read it at seventeen. But, like many clever books written by clever men, it just didn’t hit me hard enough, or deep enough. The only scene that began to resonate with me in a way that felt really meaningful was the last, and it ended far too abruptly, and there was just too much cheekiness before it for it really to be worth it. The book I would have liked to read would have started there, with Quentin and Margo actually discovering who one another were–this mystery, not the one that Margo left behind, was the one that, for me, has the potential to endure.

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Permalink | Comments (7) | Jun 5, 2010

7 Responses to “Goodreads Review: Paper Towns”

  1. Valerie Says:
    June 6th, 2010 at 1:42 pm

    Wow. This is the most in depth and well put book review I’ve ever read.

    You certainly have a way with words and clearly state your reasons for liking or not liking a book.

    I’ll be following your blog from now on!

  2. Phoebe Says:
    June 6th, 2010 at 2:02 pm

    Thank you!! I try to be really explicit about my tastes, because reviews are such a subjective thing–and not really so helpful if you can’t tell what it is the reviewer does like!

  3. Naomi Says:
    June 6th, 2010 at 10:46 pm

    This is a fantastic review. I really enjoyed reading it – it’s well articulated and I agree on a lot of the points.

    I found this book hard to get into – despite feeling like I should really love it. I think our reading preferences must be similar as I also prefer emotionally effecting stories rather than gimmicky witty ones. I did enjoy some of the dialogue and story, but felt a bit lost in the middle, when the plot seemed to stagnate a bit, and the constant Walt Whitman stuff detracted from the story for me… Also, the main protag and love interest is very similar to Green’s earlier two novels. it must be his signature theme: geeky guy/vibrant out-of-your-league girl on a journey to self-discovery with quirky side-kicks. Still, I think his style stands out in YA, and he has carved out a little niche for himself with his clever nerd type books.

    Thanks for sharing :)

  4. Phoebe Says:
    June 6th, 2010 at 10:53 pm

    Thanks, Naomi! I agree that John Green seems to be filling a necessary niche here–I can’t imagine what it would have been like to read a book stylistically close to Palahniuk or Coupland, but with protags my age, as a teenager. Probably amazing! Still, I can’t help but wonder what was really discovered here, and if the ultimate characterization of Margo was really any better than a “paper girl”–after all, her big, humanizing secret is that she lusts after Q, just as he hopes. I’m considering taking a look at Looking for Alaska, which I’ve heard is similar, but better done. I’m just not sure if I can get past my dislike of manic pixie dream girls, and how their whole existence seems to revolve around nice, if boring, guys.

  5. T. H. Mafi Says:
    June 7th, 2010 at 7:25 pm

    wow this is a very insightful review — i haven’t read the book yet, but i’ve heard lots of good things, so it’s nice to hear the other side. i really appreciate your perspective and your honesty!

    thanks so much!!

  6. Phoebe Says:
    June 7th, 2010 at 7:26 pm

    Thanks, T. H.! There are a lot of things to like here, but I think ultimately, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. It’s good enough to be worth a shot, at least.

  7. Jaimie Says:
    June 8th, 2010 at 3:55 am

    Dang, I wish I HAD read this book. Apparently you wrote a really good review, huh? :P

    PS. Thanks a million for your title help. So many people I ask about this are clueless… not really their fault, since they don’t write. But still. I appreciate when people like you can give input.

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