Watermark Books & Cafe

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Miles Halter goes searching for an end to his blah-nothing life when he leaves home for an Alabama boarding school. What he finds there – brilliant best friends who know how to bend all the rules, contraband cigarettes and wine, his first girlfriend, and a world-religions teacher who wakes him up to life and death – will remake his sixteen-year-old world.

Looking for Alaska recently won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award for Teen Literature from the American Library Association. It’s a young-adult novel of uncommon power, a story of teenagers testing limits and learning the joys and danger of being young and invulnerable. At his new school, Miles quickly joins the orbit of Chip, his math-whiz roommate, and Alaska Young, a beautiful, larger-than-life girl brimful of poetry and skeletons. The two are ring-leaders of a faction intent on staging elaborate pranks to humiliate the rich kids who adorn their elite prep school.

Each of the three leads is an irresistible character: Chip, who insists on being called "The Colonel," is a rowdy poor kid with a massive chip on his shoulder, and he does nothing by half measures, whether it’s heckling a basketball game or plotting the ultimate prank. Alaska flirts too much, drinks too much, reveals too little about herself, but makes up for it all with her irrepressible joy in books and all the stupid moments of the day. Caught up in the pull of their "booze and mischief," skinny Miles (who The Colonel ironically dubs "Pudge") dusts off the great questions of life – why am I here (other than college prep), what must I do on this earth (besides study), and "how will I ever get out of this labyrinth" of pain and hoping.

Alloyed with the appealing characters and their mad campaigns, the carefully balanced plot makes for a thoroughly engaging read. The book clicks with tension for its first half, counting down to the event that changes everything for Miles and his circle of friends. The second half replaces that expectation of What with a searching need for Why: why would a gifted young person rush so blindly toward self-destruction? And why must loss hurt so much?

John Green rightly deserves award and acclaim: Looking for Alaska stands head and shoulders above the crowd of teen fiction as an honest and ambitious story about adolescents seeking love, meaning, answers, and peace. In its sharp hunger and confused intensity, adult readers will recall their own early days; young adults will simply recognize themselves.