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.
This book, like all of John Green’s other books, was quirky and amazingly written. However, having read all of his other books first, it was fairly obvious that this was his first novel.
I felt like most of his characters in this novel were a little overly quirky, and as such they were hard for me to relate to, though that might also have been their tendency towards drunkenness and their constant smoking. Those are never particularly warming behaviors of mine.
The structuring of this was very interesting. It had its chapter system as a countdown showing us what was before the event and what was after. I was entertained through most of the before part, though I kind of lost patience with Alaska and her melodramatic approach to everything. And the after… well, let’s just say I was trying really hard not to cry in front of my entire family over this book. I won’t spoil anyone by telling you what the divide was, though I thought that the character’s reaction to the event were spot on. And I really loved the Speaker Day prank, it was hilarious and perfect for Alaska.
Overall, it was a very good book, and I’d recommend it to plenty of my friends and family, though probably more so to those of my friends who are still in high school and middle school more than my adult friends.
The final question for readers is “How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?