Paper Towns
I love John Green. I loved An Abundance of Katherines and I absolutely loved Paper Towns. It was like I'd read this book just when I needed to. And Margo Roth Spiegelman is just about my new hero. So, if you do not know it, just run to the nearest bookshop and buy it!, it's your lucky day since my review of the book is just past the cut. ;)
Paper Towns
by John Green
“I’m a big beliver in random capitalization. The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle.” Margo Roth Spiegelman.
Margo Roth Spiegelman is an enigma. A beautiful enigma, if you ask Quentin Jacobsen, but still a big unresolved enigma. Nonetheless, when she shows up at his window in the middle of the night, and takes him in the most exciting night of his life, made of vendettas, breaking and entering’s, he cannot be anything but stunned. But the real quest of the solution of the enigma begins the morning after, when Margo Roth Spiegelman is nowhere to be found, like she has disappeared from the face of the earth. Following the little clues Margo has left him, willingly or not, he begins to search for her, discovering in the process that Margo Roth Spiegelman is lots of people. Everyone has a different Margo in their mind, like she was not a real girl, but just an idea of a girl, different from person to person. Struggling to find out who Margo Roth Spiegelman, the girl of his dreams, really is, Quentin thinks about life and friendship and love and future and death and somewhere along the way he understands what Margo was talking about when, looking at their small city, she said it was just a paper town, with paper boys and paper girls, caring about paper things. Quentin understands that paper towns are everywhere, with bi-dimensioned people, thin as paper, and everyone loves just the idea of the other, because all they can see is their paper faces, and everything is so fictitious and that’s the reason she left. Because she was a paper girl too and she didn't want to be anymore. A modern tale about a girl wanting to find her place in this paper-thin world, where nobody cares about things that really matters, and a boy, ready to give everything to find her, to understand her, and growing up in the process. But what if Margo doesn't want to be found? What if this time she doesn’t want to come back? Quentin has learnt is lesson this time: not always everything is about getting the girl. Sometimes is just enough to find her.
Written amazingly well, with witty dialogs and brilliant characters, Paper Towns makes a surprisingly real portrayal of teenagers, by describing their uncertainty towards the future, their want to grow up fast, but most important, their need of freedom, the freedom to think, to talk, to just walk away and leave, and change their life and make everything better, without having to ask permission to anyone, without thinking about the future. Margo says: “ Now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future”, and what she really implies is “And the present? What about the present? Isn't it worth living?" If I had a cent for every time I have asked this question to myself I'll probably be rich right now. xD