At the end of the summer, I wrote an article about some books coming out this fall that I couldn't wait to read. At the top of the list was John Green’s newest book, “Turtles All the Way Down.” I read all of John’s books in middle school and high school and have been a Nerdfighter basically since I discovered Youtube. I was at Vidcon this summer, in the audience, when John announced the title and release date for “Turtles All the Way Down.” So you could say I’m a fan.
That being said, it’s been five years since the release of John Green’s last book. I was a sophomore in high school then. Now I’m a senior in college. I’m a different person reading this new book than I was when reading, say, “Looking for Alaska.” I’m not an awkward, angsty fifteen-year-old anymore (well, maybe still a bit awkward.) But reading "Turtles All the Way Down," I felt like that same teenager again. And strangely enough, I loved it. I loved it because I remembered why I fell in love with his books when I was thirteen, fifteen, and now, at twenty-one.
John’s books are “young adult” but they are important for teens and adults. In “Turtles All the Way Down,” mental health is explored bluntly and truthfully. Aza, the protagonist, tells her story of living with OCD. It’s impossible to truly know what it’s like to have OCD (or any other mental illness, really) when you don’t have it, but reading Aza’s inner monologues certainly helped give me some idea of what it’s like to struggle with OCD. And that’s what all good books should do – give people a lens through which to experience and understand others’ lives, struggles, and victories.
Another thing I love about this novel is how deep John allows his characters to be, even though they’re young. Too often between the ages of about twelve and nineteen, the feelings you have are dismissed as trivial or a “phase.” They are often portrayed as vapid or careless. But as John shows through this novel, young people have emotions and that those emotions are valid. They can be intelligent and have thoughts like “I missed everybody. To be alive is to be missing.” and “Our hearts were broken in the same places. That's something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself.”
John’s characters in this new novel (and his others) are real and believable and he is great at writing some deep one-liners that I have clung to in years past. I had “The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.” and “What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?” on my walls of my bedroom in high school.
I thought that reading “Turtles All the Way Down” would feel different somehow now that I’m not in high school anymore. I thought I would feel distanced from the characters because I’m a different person. But I didn’t. Cause it turns out, I’m still angsty. I’m still emotional. I still love a good one-liner. Being worried about what people think of you and feeling misunderstood doesn’t start at thirteen and end once you get a high school diploma. These emotions follow you no matter how old you are. And you know what helps the most when feeling misunderstood? Reading a book and realizing you aren’t alone. So John, thanks for letting me and a bunch of teens (and former teens,) know that we’re not alone. Not alone in our feelings, not alone in our anxieties, and certainly not alone in our angst.
