Looking for Alaska – not that Alaska – by John Green
I somehow thought Looking for Alaska was set somewhere in the state of Alaska. So it isn’t.
Miles is a shy, slouchy boy who seems to know what he can and what he wants. Of his own accord, he goes to a boarding school. He befriends Chip, Takumi, and the peculiar girl Alaska, who are other cost-schoolers from the poorer strata of society. They form a club to take on the arrogant kids from more affluent families.
Miles and his friends are somewhat outcasts at the school. They smoke and drink and share a love of literature. Miles falls in love with Alaska. She had a rather complicated childhood after her mother died at a young age.
At the end of school, Alaska crashes in the middle of the night in her car on her way to her mother’s grave. The question that occupies the teenagers left behind is whether she committed suicide and, more importantly, why she would have done so. The second half of the book finds Miles and his friends searching for the answers to these questions, in addition to bullying the Eagle, the dean of the school. In the second part, I miss the quirks of the Alaska character. But she is dead.
John Green says in the book’s epilogue that this story did not succeed as well as his other books have succeeded, mainly because his regular editor could not help him with this one. I think Green lacks a little self-confidence because Looking for Alaska is just a very good book. In Anthropocene Reviewed style, I give Looking for Alaska … 5 stars.
