Paper Towns by John Green

reviewed by Gerti

I’ve read several John Green books now, and while “Paper Towns” is not my favorite, it is not his worst either. PT has a typical Green formula - a charming pre-college narrator (Quentin Jacobsen in this case) who travels the country, amidst tortured tales of teen angst and romance. High school senior Q (short for Quentin) is in love with his neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, who is far more attractive, more interesting, and more everything than Quentin. She is a popular girl with a reputation for fearlessness, and as such, hell breaks loose when she finds out her boyfriend has been cheating on her. Q helps with her multifaceted revenge plan, but when Margo’s breakup precedes her leaving town, “Paper Towns” turns into “Looking for Alaska,” another (better) Green novel in which the female love interest disappears, forcing the protagonist into a road trip of self discovery. In this case, it is also literally a trip from Florida to a “paper town” in New York.

Quentin faces the same issues faced by Alaska’s hero – has the girl he was crushing on killed herself? To find resolution, Q and his friends (fellow seniors Radar and Ben, as well as Ben’s girlfriend Lacey) follow clue after clue in order to track down a mercifully still-living Margo. But there are few happy endings in life, and there is none here in “Paper Towns”, for while the band of friends find Margo in Agloe, New York (a town which doesn’t really exist at all), Margo didn’t want to be found. The “paper town” destination is a metaphor for Q’s relationship with Margo herself. He is in love with his idea of her, and not with the person she really is. In the same way, a paper town exists only on paper, a place invented by map publishers to keep others from stealing their information.

This book, like all of Green’s novels, is populated by fascinating, quirky, sometimes brilliant characters. The situations presented are also relatively unique, but I like this book less than some of Green’s previous efforts, perhaps because Margo is so very unlikeable. Her revenge plan for her cheating boyfriend is over the top, her idea of fun (sneaking into Sea World when it’s closed) is over the top, and her final departure from her previous life, family and friends, is so abrupt and final that she seems seriously damaged, rather than charmingly adventurous. She has deep-seated psychological problems and needs professional help, not just a group of supportive friends. Her pattern of living alone in deserted buildings (one a mini-mall filled with asbestos) is dangerous and for a young, attractive woman, a recipe for disaster.

Green’s books are usually charming, fun and easy-to-read, but this novel leaves me with a sour taste. When Q leaves Margo behind, I root for him to get over her, because I don’t see her story ending in anything besides suicide. I understand Green’s message – that we can never really know other people - but that ground was covered more effectively over a hundred years ago by Nathaniel Hawthorne in “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Avoid making a trip to this “Paper Town.”