Paper Thin

Book Review: Paper Towns by John Green

Paper Towns has been on my reading list for quite some time. To be honest, it was the first John Green book I wanted to read, but I heard that it was usually considered to be his "best" novel (this being said before The Fault in Our Stars was published)and I didn't want to be disappointed if I read his other two novels afterwards, so I read them first. Over two and a half years later, after having a copy physically put into my hands by my roommate and having read first An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and then his most recent TFiOS, I read my favorite John Green book.

And I know what people say, "TFIOS IS THE BEST WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!?!", and I'd agree that it was beautifully written and felt, and that I shed none to few tears through out the course of its pages. However. TFiOs wasn't written for me, in the same way that his two novels I read prior to it were not written for me. And Paper Towns was. (No, I obviously don't mean that John Green interviewed me, or dedicated the book to me, or that I've broken into Sea World after hours...).

I tramp a perpetual journey

It wasn't the familiarity and validation given to the paper homes and paper lives in Florida; nor was it about the nuances of who you love when you love a person (between the "them" you see, the "them" you fabricate in your mind, the "self" they attempt to create for others, the "self" they actually project, all of which are at a disconnect to who they (and you) really are...) and the way that we go about our lives looking into/out of mirrors to our observable surroundings; nor was it about what happened to the characters at the end of this snapshot of their lives.

I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven/     O suns-- O grass of graves-- O perpetual transfers and promotions/   If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

The prose, the meta-knowledge of the narrator and main character, the silences. The strings interconnecting it all. We are all apart of a field of grass growing out of the past and reaching for new light. But we are also individual blades in our own right with unique purpose and design.