Paper Towns

While it took me just a ½ day to read “Shiver” on Thursday, I then decided to jump into “Paper Towns” on Friday. I wish I had read this before “Shiver” because my attention span to this book required 3 days of reading to finish it; not to say it wasn’t a good book but just not as fast-paced as “Shiver”. I will admit the characters were very stereotypical of the high school kids I remember growing up with, yes, back in the “80’s. Really, kids back then are not that much different than they are today. The author really didn’t have to go into details with the description of the characters, although he did more so with Margo with the way he described her look but left a mystery as to who she really was. From the author’s descriptions alone though, one cannot really put a face to the character but the personality traits of each character given, I just imagined the faces of the people I went to school with or from one of those high school movies I watched and gave the face to the characters in the book. That was very clever of the author in that he did not have to go into as much detail as the other books I have read; we had to think on our own and visualize what the characters looked like. Sure, you have Quentin the timid, Margo the rebel, Radar/Marcus the brain of the gang, Ben who is the perverted nerd gone wild but really has a good heart and shallow Lacey, who later is open-minded to let Ben in her life, and Jase the typical I’m better than thou jock, Chuck the jerky big jock, and Becca the “B” and so forth. It was a vivid bunch of characters, so typical of high school students today. Being around teenagers, all the time myself, I could see bits of these book characters in the teens I know, even down to their disgusting colloquial language and their humor. The games Arctic Fury and Resurrection were big in the book. Although, somewhat crude at times, the humor of the Ben the Libido kid with his constant peeing and infatuation with penises, his “big” balls and his honey bunnies only goes to show that yes these are the thoughts and the language from teens today but then you had his sensitive side with the comical prom shoe shopping discussion with “Q”; hilarious. Although the language and conversations were over the top sometimes, I enjoyed the humor of the conversations between these young teen boys. The plot is somewhat drawn out and I pretty well imagined how it would end; although I like the comparisons they did throughout the book with poetry and life. You felt sorry for Margo who was such a troubled teen that nobody ever really knew or understood who Margo was and she too didn’t really find herself until she left or did she? She said, “Your will go to the Paper Towns and you will never come back.” It was the story of her trying to find herself, a scared, confused teen and yes a bit selfish at times, not taking into consideration her family and friends who did love her even though she thought they didn’t care. You felt though as if her family had finally given up on her, especially when they changed the locks but I think they just knew Margo and realized there was no changing her and she had to finds things out on her own. She also says, “Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will” and that is so true and sometimes you just have to face up to the facts that it’s not a perfect world and people aren’t always who you think they are. I liked Quentin’s quote when he said,”The town was paper but the memories were not”. Sometimes, we need to go on this perpetual journey to find ourselves and find out who we really are. Not that we have to do something drastic and go that far but find out what things mean but we never really get all the answers and that keeps us motivated to persevering and going on with life. The book leaves you hanging by do we ever find out who Margo really is and does she ever really find herself. The kiss was a nice touch but we end the book just feeling that they won’t see each other again; too many broken strings.