Kim M's Reviews > Looking for Alaska

“…the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did.”

Reserved and safe-living Miles Halter is tired of his mundane and friendless life. He decides to transfer to his father’s old boarding school, where he makes real friends for the first time ever and succumbs horribly to peer pressure—taking up drinking, smoking, pranking, and sexual activity. He also falls instantly in love with Alaska Young, the beautiful, intelligent, wild, mysterious, intriguing, inwardly broken, free-spirited girl down the hall (sound familiar?Paper Towns, anyone?).

Looking for Alaska is a John Green book, so of course it’s filled with overly smart and philosophical teens that all have a “thing” that is supposed to distinguish them. (In this case, “Pudge” reads biographies and memorizes last words, “the Colonel” memorizes countries in alphabetical order as well as their capitals, and Alaska has a huge library and memorizes poetry.)

That being said, Looking for Alaska isn’t a bad novel. I liked it a whole lot more than Paper Towns, at least. Being a John Green novel, it obviously deals with deep issues on a philosophical level, which I personally like. I think that Green does a fantastic job of boiling down some of life’s greatest questions into a relevant format that his teenage target audience will relate to, understand, and find deeply meaningful. Not only are these topics discussed in dialogue and narrative, but they are illustrated through events and key plot points.

Another positive aspect of this novel is its structure. The fact that everything is leading to a huge, life-changing event—as indicated by the “x days before” headings—makes the beginning section (that could have felt a little directionless) more driven and meaningful. I didn’t get bored. I was just curious to know what everything was leading up to.

The characters are pretty good, really, and given that this is Green’s first novel, the standard Green personalities were still original and not yet recycled. Most of the characters are not overly complex, but then Pudge doesn’t know them that well, so it’s probably not a huge deal. Pudge, the Colonel, and Alaska were all just fine. Nothing special, but nothing terrible, either.

What we do get to know really well is Alaska’s body. I swear, her physical description is more developed than anyone’s personality. And of course Pudge is obsessed with her curves before he even likes talking to her. Here is an excerpt of my text conversation to my sister when I was getting to be about 25% through:

“This book is so annoying. It’s about some loser dude who went to a boarding school and likes some girl and I swear I know more about how her boobs look in every tank top that she wears than I do about anything else in the book.”

It’s kinda true, though. And he doesn’t even like her at first; he thinks she’s a jerk. But man, is he obsessed with that bod.

Also, Alaska is very vocally feminist; however, it isn’t portrayed in a positive light. Alaska isn’t even good at being feminist—

“Alaska decided to go help Dolores with dinner. She said that it was sexist to leave the cooking to the women, but better to have good sexist food than crappy boy-prepared food.”

(First of all, cooking isn’t even that hard. You follow a recipe. Second of all, um yeah Alaska you’re being sexist under a guise of fake feminism.) Also check out this conversation between Alaska and the Colonel:

C: She’s got great breasts.
A: DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN’S BODIES!
C: Sorry. Perky breasts.
A: That’s not any better!
C: Sure it is. Great is a judgment on a woman’s body. Perky is merely an observation. They are perky. I mean, Christ.
A: You’re hopeless. So she thinks you’re cute, Pudge.

(Um… wait. Seriously? We’re letting the Colonel win that conversation?! And Alaska doesn’t even seem to care that much. Like, she pays her lip service and when it doesn’t work she’s like whatev yo I don’t really care.)

Not to mention, she thinks it’s so funny when some guy grabs her boob without her consent that she tells the story OVER and OVER and OVER again, and she doesn’t care when brand new random kid Pudge who doesn’t even like her (and in fact keeps calling her a bitch) stares down her shirt. She gives him a quick, playful “Perv” for that bit of objectification and that’s it.

—and even when Alaska does have decent things to say, no one takes her seriously. It feels like everyone’s like, “There goes crazy, quirky Alaska again with her ‘subverting the patriarchal paradigm’ nonsense… isn’t she cute? Isn’t she funny? (Or even, isn’t she obnoxious?) That’s our Alaska. We love her anyway.”

So yeah. That stuff bothered me a lot. I do think it’s the worst in about the first third or so and after that it gets a little better, but still.

Yeah. What else is there to say? The objectification of women/false feminism is awful, the characters are fine, the story itself is pretty good, and the philosophical exploration is great. Tentatively recommend.