Paper Towns by John Green
Quentin Jacobsen - Q to his friends - is eighteen and has always loved the edgy Margo Roth Spiegelman. As children they'd discovered a dead body together. Now at high school, Q's nerdy while Margo is uber-cool. One night, Q is basking in the predictable boringness of his life when Margo, dressed as a ninja, persuades him to participate in several hours of mayhem. Then she vanishes. While her family shrugs off this latest disappearance, Q follows Margo's string of elaborate clues - including a poem about death. Q's friends, Radar, Ben and Lacey, help with the search, and a post turns up on a website: Margo will be in a certain location for the next 24 hours only. The race is on! After an epic drive through the night, they catch up a with Margo, and Q learns first-hand that the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are.\n\nReviews\n\nGr 9 Up-Quentin Jacobsen, 17, has been in love with his next-door\nneighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, for his entire life. A leader at\ntheir Central Florida high school, she has carefully cultivated her\nbadass image. Quentin is one of the smart kids. His parents are\ntherapists and he is, above all things, "goddamned well adjusted."\nHe takes a rare risk when Margo appears at his window in the middle\nof the night. They drive around righting wrongs via her brilliant,\nelaborate pranks. Then she runs away (again). He slowly uncovers\nthe depth of her unhappiness and the vast differences between the\nreal and imagined Margo. Florida's heat and homogeneity as depicted\nhere are vivid and awful. Green's prose is astounding-from\nhilarious, hyperintellectual trash talk and shtick, to complex\nphilosophizing, to devastating observation and truths. He nails\nit-exactly how a thing feels, looks, affects-page after page. The\nmystery of Margo-her disappearance and her personhood-is\nfascinating, cleverly constructed, and profoundly moving. Green\nbuilds tension through both the twists of the active plot and the\ngravitas of the subject. He skirts the stock coming-of-age\ncharacter arc-Quentin's eventual bravery is not the revelation.\nInstead, the teen thinks deeper and harder-about the beautiful and\nterrifying ways we can and cannot know those we love.\nLess-sophisticated readers may get lost in Quentin's copious\ntranscendental ruminations-give Paper Towns to your sharpest\nteens.-Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library Copyright 2008 Reed\nBusiness Information.\n\nGreen melds elements from his Looking for Alaska and An Abundance\nof Katherines-- the impossibly sophisticated but unattainable girl,\nand a life-altering road trip--for another teen-pleasing read.\nWeeks before graduating from their Orlando-area high school,\nQuentin Jacobsen's childhood best friend, Margo, reappears in his\nlife, specifically at his window, commanding him to take her on an\nall-night, score-settling spree. Quentin has loved Margo from not\nso afar (she lives next door), years after she ditched him for a\ncooler crowd. Just as suddenly, she disappears again, and the\nplot's considerable tension derives from Quentin's mission to find\nout if she's run away or committed suicide. Margo's parents, inured\nto her extreme behavior, wash their hands, but Quentin thinks she's\nleft him a clue in a highlighted volume of Leaves of Grass. Q's\nsidekick, Radar, editor of a Wikipedia-like Web site, provides the\nmost intelligent thinking and fuels many hilarious exchanges with\nQ. The title, which refers to unbuilt subdivisions and "copyright\ntrap" towns that appear on maps but don't exist, unintentionally\nunderscores the novel's weakness: both milquetoast Q and\nself-absorbed Margo are types, not fully dimensional characters.\nReaders who can get past that will enjoy the edgy journey and\noff-road thinking. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business\nInformation.
Publication Details
Title:
Author(s):
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Binding: Paperback
Published by: HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd: , 2009
Edition:
ISBN: 9780732289003 | 0732289009
368 pages.
Book Condition: Good
cover worn
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