Did you enjoy Perks of Being a Wallflower? Dead Poets Society? John Green’s Looking for Alaska encapsulates that feeling of poeticism in everyday life, the lessons we can take away from the people that enter and exit our lives, and the decision we all must make of navigating life’s labyrinth.

Looking for Alaska centers around 16 year old Miles Halter, who ventures to a boarding school in search of his Great Perhaps -- a phrase drawn from the last words of poet Francois Rabellais, “I go to seek a Great Perhaps. That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps,”. Living an unfulfilling life of little risk, Miles takes this jump into the unknown and meets Alaska, a person unlike he’d ever known. Green describes them as opposites, analogizing Miles as unable to step off the brake, and Alaska unable to step off the accelerator. Their relationship is able to accurately portray those rare people or situations we find throughout life who complete us and teach us, as well as the darker sides of them which we try so laboriously to ignore. This duality is represented chiefly in Alaska who questions, “How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” She provides the missing piece to Miles’s Great Perhaps and prompts the reader to look deeper into their own labyrinth, their own personal suffering and how they will go about dealing with it. It begs the question, will you step ceaselessly on the accelerator like Alaska, keep to the brake like Miles, or look farther to your own Great Perhaps? 

The novel is separated into two separate sections: ‘before’ and ‘after.’ For the first half, there are entries set in days before a momentous event takes place, and the second half is separated into entries describing the days after that event. The somewhat unordinary formatting is able to keep the reader enraptured, as the pace remains fast and fairly constant. It is also a relatively easy read comprehension wise, but has core ideas instilled into the reader which keeps one thinking. All in all, the concepts Green shows us are fairly easy to digest, we as the readers need to do the rest for ourselves, which is the more difficult aspect. Beyond this, the tropes and overall layout of the plot is similar to a lot of media which the average person would be familiar with; while reading I often found myself comparing it to a late 90s to early 2000s teen movie. Said familiarity combined with the more uncommon and thought provoking ideas of the author make for an interesting read that isn’t easily findable anywhere else.

A warning that one should be aware of before reading is the very gritty way that Green writes; he includes frequent instances and mentions of substance abuse, familial trauma, sexual situations, and death - although never too over-the-line graphic and none unnecessary to the characterization and feel of the novel. Altogether, John Green’s Looking for Alaska is certainly well worth reading, as the novel manages to be comedic, dark, and realistic all at the same time and the questions it prompts readers with are truly unique.