Paper Towns

John Green's third novel Paper Towns follows Q (Quentin Jacobson), a boy in his final year at school, who lives next door to the enigmatic Margo Roth Spiegelman. Although they were friends as children, their relationship has now evolved into Margo being the almost Queen Bee at school, and Q being one of her many admirers. However, one night, Margo appears outside Q's bedroom window and they embark on a night of fun revenge. The next morning, Margo has disappeared and Q takes it upon himself to track her down-aided by his friends Ben, Radar and Ben's girlfriend Lacey.

Whilst Looking for Alaska dealt with what the 'great perhaps' is; Paper Towns deals with our perceptions of other people. It's generally very well done and is something that is incredibly relatable. All people have different perceptions of others; I would doubt that if you went around a room everyone would say exactly the same thing about one person; and Paper Towns deals with this in quite a good way.

In addition to dealing with quite a serious topic, Paper Towns was also in some cases laugh-out-loud funny (I'm thinking of the scene involving Radar & a Confederate T-Shirt), which was remarkably refreshing against the backdrop of a sometimes worrying situation.

The supporting characters are all incredibly well-drawn. There's Ben, the crazily over-confident best friend and Radar, his 'token black friend' (Radar's words) who runs a website that is very like Wikipedia. The two of them are very life-like, and I really warmed to them.

However, the only thing about the book that made me enjoy it a little less was the fact that Q and Margo seem to be pretty much the same characters as Pudge and Alaska. Whilst Q is slightly more confident than Pudge, it made me worry that Green, despite his great writing and ability to tackle big themes, only seems to be able to write one type of character. I think for that reason I'll be reading Will Grayson, Will Grayson next (which is a collaboration with David Levithan), and I look forward to his next novel, which will be told from the female perspective.

That said, I did really enjoy Paper Towns. Some of the things said by the characters really resonated with me and I do recommend it.