Looking for Alaska by John Green

(**This post may contain some spoilers and not taking any credits for the pictures attached. 🙂 )

If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

 

“LOOKING FOR ALASKA”

When I started reading this book, I was not expecting it at all to go like this. In the first half, I thought it is going to be another teenage romance novel and I, seriously, hated Alaska Young’s character  and Mile was pretty boring. The life at boarding school is written okay-ish. I mean it was pretty normal with all the nicknames to the fellow students, tease names/name calling for teachers, general student life and food issues at mess. I liked Eagle’s character though. May be because we can all relate to it as we all had one Eagle in our times. Loved Takumi’s rapping skills. They were a little silly but awesome. Although, I found his character a little low, not much to it. So, his character was not very interesting. Seemed like he was always third-wheeling or something. Lara was a girly girl. I loved her cuteness. Then, Colonel is the only lovable character among them. He was pretty cool, smart and normal. But the way John Green wanted to project him as the popular, don’t give a crap kinds, it did not come our very well. Basically, I hated the first half of the book.

BUT…

The second half! It leaves you with a whirlwind of emotions. It takes all the five stars from me. I can’t even fathom how John Green manages to put such emotions in words and make his readers feel so much. You feel empathetic towards the loss of someone so hateful and broken. Really! I don’t think anyone could put the loss and grief of losing someone so very accurately and well by putting the mere 26 alphabets together. And the self blaming part was very relatable and well written. The parts where they try to walk through the incident and get inside Alaska’s brain. Again and again just to get a closure or make sense of it. Or may be to keep remembering her, to keep a memory of her or just finding an excuse to talk about her. They tried to keep her alive by bring that night again and again as if by just taking about her & by solving the puzzle, they could change things and bring her back from the dead. May be it was their guilt or a way to keep her close or may be both. The struggle with loss & grief and the difficulty to keep the friendships after a group member is lost or dead is heart wrenching. How Alaska left so many unfinished things and unkempt promises reflects the point that the bubble of life can burst any second, any moment. We cannot fore see it and make safety plans. We don’t get time to finish things or say Goodbyes. It doesn’t even warn and let prepare ourselves to go for good. Things may happen when we least expect them to. We give no thought to death but keep planning for future. How nonchalant we are towards death and take life for granted.

The regret we keep for years of that one wrong deed. And keep rewinding our brains back to the very moment and think that how we could do things differently. Later, with all the reminiscence, how we wish for a real time machine. We actually think about death and what happens after it. We are too scared a specie to talk about death so openly, that we don’t give it a thought unless someone really close to us is dead. Or until someone’s death has affected us in some way. And then only we sometimes rack our brains mad thinking where do the person really go after being dead. Is it a place prettier than this one or is it a living hell? Or is it just a space made of plain darkness & nothingness? And how we get ready to deny the space of darkness & nothingness over a place called Hell, just to keep them alive if not in this but some other world.

I won’t lie this book really drifted me into depression for a while. And the paper, that Pudge wrote, in the end was very intelligently & thoughtfully written and adds more awesomeness to the book.

Like in the book, I truly believe that forgiveness is one way of getting out of the labyrinth but it is also the hardest thing to do. May be that is why, most of the world is stuck in the labyrinth and never gets out. 😦

I guess, I liked this book a little more than” The fault in our stars”. And looking forward to read more of John Green’s. 🙂

So, Lovers, if you have read this book or any other John Green book or may be anything related to this books.. please share your thoughts. Thank You! 😀

-pcb