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“Maybe there’s something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or somewhere you’re afraid to go. It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt because it matters.”
-John Green
John Green’s first novel ever ‘Looking for Alaska’s is a literary treat. Encapsulating the whole high-school experience, it makes its readers feel things ever so personally. It makes you happy and sad at the same time and leaves you feeling unsettled yet content at its ending.
Anyone who has read John Green before knows that his novels are an emotional roller coaster but ‘Looking for Alaska’ is something else. It is funny, sad, exciting and heart-breaking, all at the same time.
Introduction
Book’s name - Looking for Alaska
Author’s name - John Green
Genre - Young Adult Novel
Language - English
Synopsis - Spoiler Alert!
‘Looking for Alaska’ entails the story of Miles Halter or Pudge as his friends call him, and his journey in a new high-school. Pudge’s greatest hobby is to remember the last words of people and he moves from his home to Culver Creek High-school, which is a residential school in search of his “great perhaps”.
In the school, Miles immediately befriends his classmate and roommate Chip who goes by the name The Colonel and it is Chip who names him Pudge because of Miles’s petiteness. Chip introduces Walter to Alaska Young and Takumi who have their own peculiar idiosyncrasies. Alaska collects books which she calls her life’s library and her room is filled with them.
Together, Alaska, Chip, Pudge and Takumi plan multiple pranks, smoke, drink, party and take on fights with the richer kids at school who they call the Weekday Warriors, until one day something snaps and all is changed forever.
About the Author
Picture Credits: Pinterest
John Michael Green is an American writer famous for his excellent and most popular book ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ which has been adapted into an English film with the same title starring Ansel Elgort and Shailene Woodley and the recently released Hindi version ‘Dil Bechara’ starring the late Sushant Singh Rajput and Sanjana Sanghi.
Although Green is most appreciated for his book ‘The Fault in Our Stars’, he has written many more excellent books like ‘Turtles All the Way Down’, ‘Paper Towns’ and obviously ‘Looking for Alaska’ for which he won the 2006 Printz Award. Along with writing books, John Green also runs a YouTube channel with excellent content.
About the Book
The book starts with Pudge or Miles Halter, leaving his home in Florida to go to a boarding school in Birmingham, AL, called the Culver Creek. There he meets Chip or the Colonel and immediately becomes friends with Alaska and Takumi who are Chip’s friends. Miles has never had any friends back at home and he is happy to be included into a group for once and becomes this rule-breaker who smokes and drinks on campus.
Also he begins to have a crush on Alaska, who is beautiful, dangerous, impulsive and complicated. They make a pact which involves Alaska helping Pudge to find a girlfriend which she soon does, and Pudge in turn finding the answer to the question she reads out of Marquez’s book which was, what is the way out of the labyrinth?
When Miles first arrives on campus, Kevin and Longwell, two Weekday Warriors (wealthy kids who don’t board at school), pull him out of bed in the middle of the night, wrap him in duct tape and throw him into the school’s lake. The Colonel is furious about this and he and Alaska work on a plan to get back at them.
Over time, the group discovers that Kevin and Longwell had thought that the Colonel had ratted to the Eagle, the Dean of students, about two students named Marya and Paul. Marya used to be Alaska’s roommate but she and Paul were caught smoking pot, after having drunken sex and expelled. Kevin and Longwell thus hurt one of the Colonel’s friends because they thought he hurt one of theirs.
Soon they discover that Alaska was the one who had ratted out Paul and Marya and the Colonel Stops talking to her until one day the Weekday Warriors take it a little too far and flood Alaska’s room. Alaska’s desire to get back at the Weekday Warriors is aggravated when they ruin her “Life’s Library” of books she is saving to read.
All this is followed by a series of pranks and one night Alaska and Pudge finally act on all their inbuilt feelings for each other after which Alaska leaves. But the very next morning all the students are called to the gymnasium where the Eagle announces that Alaska had died in a car accident.
The death of Alaska leaves her friends, shocked and confused and they think that she might have killed herself. They don’t really figure out what might have happened at the time of the accident and if it truly was an accident. Pudge submits his assignment for the final exam in which he answers Alaska’s question about the labyrinth where he says that the only way out of the labyrinth is to forgive.
Looking for Alaska has been made into a series on Hulu titled the same, starring Charlie Plummer as Miles and Christine Froseth as Alaska Young. Having both read the book and watched the show, I can say that the show does some justice to the book but of course the book is better.
Learning Outcomes
Possibly the most important thing that one learns and realizes after reading the book is how much we take for granted in our lives and how we tend to over complicate situations when they can just be resolved by talking and listening.
Miles remembers so many last words but he could never know Alaska’s and this is his greatest regret. Alaska Young was a complicated character but the end she meets could have been easily prevented if she was just a little forthcoming, honest and willing to ask for help and accept it.
The book puts so many things into perspective and leaves us with a bittersweet feeling.
Famous Quotes
“Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where it is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”
“So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were to rain, I was drizzling and she was a hurricane.”
“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
“What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.”
The Bottom Line
‘Looking for Alaska’ is not just a book, it is an experience and I recommend this book for anyone who is embarking on their reading adventure. The language is quite simple yet emphatic and I promise you the book will leave you with a smile on your face and a heavy heart.
My Ratings for the Book - 5 on 5.
You can find the book at Amazon - Looking for Alaska
Written By - Sakshi Singh
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