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Review:
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Harper Collins, 2006.
268 p. pbk.
ISBN 0 00 720924 X

Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature 2006

15+ First time author John Green has written an engrossing story that is very difficult to put down. 16-year-old Miles Halter goes off to Culver Creek, a boarding school in Alabama. Pudge, as he is nicknamed, collects the last words of famous people, and in the words of the poet Francois Rabelais, he goes “to seek a Great Perhaps” at his new school. Here he meets a fascinating group of people, who introduce him to friendship, freedom, alcohol and sex. He becomes enthralled by the extraordinary Alaska and the story centres around his feelings for her and the group of friends that make up her orbit.

Green writes so skillfully about his characters that they all become real to the reader, who sympathises with Pudge and his naivety, trusts the Colonel as he steers Pudge in his new life, and journeys with Alaska as the trauma she has suffered when very young becomes apparent. The adults in this book are memorable for being strong. loving and caring about the young people in their care.

The book is divided into two sections, Before and After, building up a feeling of anticipation. The humour of the first section is hilarious and balances the melancholy in the second. Themes of friendship, grief, love and guilt are handled really well and philosophical ideas and spirituality are explored.

This book deals with controversial topics – sex, smoking, drinking – but it is the questions that it asks about life and death that will remain with the reader.
Pat Pledger

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