Book Review: Paper Towns by John Green

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

Part treasure hunt, part coming-of-age narrative, and part criticism of patriarchal society, Paper Towns is an absolute treat. Devouring this book in just a few days, I was reminded of how much I enjoy John Green's writing. It's been over a decade since I read Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, and Let it Snow. The last time I tackled Green, he had just released Turtles All the Way Down - which, despite being well-crafted, is probably my least favorite of his books. Nevertheless, with his heartfelt storylines, John Green is always reliably clever, comedic, and earnest (sometimes to a fault... in our stars). And, with Paper Towns, he absolutely shines.

In Paper Towns, Green provides us with an atypical mystery tale wrapped in a riddle, encased in an enigma - and embodied by a teenage girl. Our narrator, Quentin Jacobsen, has a problem: Margo Roth Spiegelman, the enchanting girl-next-door, has vanished, leaving our nerdy protagonist heartbroken and curious (Curiously heartbroken? Heartbrokenly curious?). After an all-night episode of pranks and revenge schemes, Quentin (or "Q," as Margo dubs him) has fallen deeper in love with Margo than ever before. However, when she vanishes the next day, Quentin and his classmates must reevaluate everything they knew (or thought they knew) about the infamous Margo.

Before I continue, I should address the elephant in the room: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) trope, that unrealistic depiction of female characters who take control of a story's narrative. Think Zooey Deschanel's character in 500 Days of Summer or Natalie Portman's character in Garden State, and you get the gist. According to Nathan Rabin, the writer who coined the phrase, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl "exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." However, it isn't just film directors/screenwriters who employ this trope; rather, it's any fiction writer who decides to craft the perfect embodiment of his/her/their fantasies.

Green, much to his credit, earnestly tries to dispel this spellbinding myth. When we first encounter Margo, she appears to be the definitive MPDG - a quirky, brilliant, and beautiful young woman whose primary purpose is to serve as the catalyst for our protagonist's self-actualization. However, as Green takes us through the voyage of Paper Towns, he disassembles and deconstructs this trope, bit by mysterious bit. As he perfectly summarizes at one point, “What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.” Paper Towns is dedicated to this mystery: uncovering the "real" person underneath the paper-thin clothing of society's unrealistic expectations.

As John Green shows in Paper Towns, even the most seemingly "perfect" individuals are deeply flawed mirages - and to assume elsewise is an unintentionally cruel act. Margo, who shares DNA with the titular Alaska in Green's first novel, is a vibrant, vivacious, preternaturally intelligent superhero of hotness in the eyes of our male narrator. Yet, as Quentin continues his quest for Margo, like Ahab in pursuit of Moby-Dick (Green references Moby-Dick or, The Whale over and over in this book), he slowly realizes that Margo Roth Spiegelman (whose initials spell MRS) has more in common with the White Whale than Ahab or Ishmael.

It's been a few years since I've read anything from Green's catalog, but I'm glad that I've returned to his roadmap for YA success. Even if Paper Towns is flawed, it is flawed in an almost endearing way. I was half-inspired to finally read this novel because of its tentative link to Peng Shepherd's mediocre The Cartographers and the quirky history of the town of Agloe. Green's incorporation of the Agloe story is far more effective than Shepherd's, and it's hard to avoid comparisons to the two tales.

Weirdly enough, I finished reading Paper Towns the day before I watched Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things - another piece of art that attempts to dispel cultural myths about femininity and addresses identity ownership, bodily autonomy, and the male gaze. The two works, coupled as a duet, provide a fascinating (if not painfully clinical) examination of womanhood and the mysteries of the female world - mysteries that are much more important and meaningful than any Sherlock Holmes whodunnit tale.

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