John Green's Paper Towns

Paper Towns by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The prolouge pique my interest because a girl and a boy looked at a dead body and have two different ideas going inside their heads. I though this is going to be a mystery case.

But when you turned the first part, it was totally disappointing. It was HIGHSCHOOL OVER AND OVER. And for a non-YA lover, this is one bitter gourd. So if you are not a YA lover, do not expect too much.

Paper Towns is about a boy, nicknamed Q, who aspired to be a scholar in college and graduate with a Degree in Law. With all the geekiness inside him, he fell in love with Margo since he was a kid. He fell in love not with Margo as a girl - he fell in love with the idea of Margo - and that is what the author wanted to teach us:

"We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphors you choose, because it matters."

How we define ourselves lies in the idea that we welcome our minds. A paper town for a paper girl, having a crush with a paper guy, being geek all the time, believing in the paper future ahead of him - that for the latter, it felt so real.

We tend to be apire for our dreams and reach for more, we tend to make a difference, like a balloon filled with helium, reaching for the vastness of the blue sky, filling ourselves with hope and the essence of our beings. And how will you do it, depends upon the idea that you once feed yourself, and letting yourself get consumed by it.

I love the third part of the novel stricken by the last page of the second part - applying syntax to a write-up. Once you see her rule of capitalization on prepositions (amongst other words) you will know it is her, and you will know there is something to happen. It may not be the climax, but the heart of the novel starts there.

How the author deliver the message about living our lives, is (may I quote you Charles?) profound. Two paper characters give three-dimensional approaches to pursuing whatever "future" you wanted for yourself. The feeling of this reader on reflecting the metamorphosis - on leaving one stage to another, leaving memories behind and simply growing up - is simply magical.

I may not be a paper girl to my paper mum and I may not lived the same paper high school as theirs, but leaving the three-dimensional memories and starting over - felt the same.

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