Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
Everything that happens to Miles Halter in his first year at Culver Creek Academy can be told through the before and the after. He chooses to leave the public school system of Florida and head north to the private school in Alabama in order to gain friends, to find something new, to look for the Great Perhaps. When he arrives, he meets his roommate, the Colonel. The Colonel quickly dubs Miles Pudge and says it's time to go buy some cigarettes. A quick walk down the hallway and into another dorm room and Pudge's heart drops. It's in that dorm room that he meets Alaska Younge.
Alaska is an enigma. She's an open book but never discloses anything personal about herself. She's willing to give surface information but never allows anyone to know anything beyond that. She has an extensive book collection that she calls her "life library" and poses questions that force everyone around her to really think about their answer. She's lively, but closed off. Even after spending Thanksgiving break with her, Pudge still doesn't know who she is. All he knows is she's simply Alaska, the girl he's fallen in love with.
After a few months at school, the rich kids believe Alaska to have been the one that ratted out two fellow students the semester before and they flood her room, destroying some of her library. In retaliation, she plans a prank with Pudge, the Colonel, their friend Takumi and one of her friends which they refer to as Barn Night. The prank is successful, but it's when they play "best day/worst day" while drinking that things turn somber. Alaska tells the group that the best day of her life was when her mother took her to the zoo. The worst day was the next day when her mother died.
A few days later, Pudge, the Colonel and Alaska are celebrating the success of their prank by getting drunk in Alaska's room. They decide to play truth or dare and Pudge finds himself finally kissing Alaska. She's tired and asks if they can continue this another time. Hours pass and Pudge barely hears the phone, but wakes up when Alaska comes screaming into the room claiming she messed everything up again. She says she has to go right away and leaves in a hurry. It isn't until the next day, when the dean comes into their dorm and asks Pudge and the Colonel to head to the gym, that they realize what a mistake it was to let her leave. All that was left was After.
I liked this book. As a huge supporter of any and everything that John Green does, to say I merely liked it feels shameful. I felt like the first half wasn't as exciting as I wanted it to be, but it really just set up the second half, which I liked much better. What I love about his work is that it's so humorous, but it's so incredibly deep as well. You wonder how so much humor and depth can fit within the binding and it not be overkill, but he does it so well. Had I read this prior to reading his latest work, this review might be a little different, but I can't go back and change when I read what now. I still really liked it and would definitely tell others to read it. It was interesting and captured what's inside every one of us. A lot can be said for that kind of work.
