Miles “Pudge” Halter, the protagonist in John Green’s Looking for Alaska, is a nerdy guy with a geeky streak: he has a thing for famous last words. In order to seek “The Great Perhaps” (last words of French poet François Rabelais) he heads off to a boarding school miles from home. There, for the first time, he makes friends and he falls in love with Alaska Young. Not only is she a bunch of events waiting to happen, she also manages to send Pudge and his friends off onto a soul-searching quest into the Great Perhaps.
After reading An Abundance of Katherines I knew I had to check out Green’s other novels. And, luckily for me, I found them both in a local bookstore. Alaska ticked all the right boxes: it’s smart, it’s funny, it’s sad and it doesn’t mind tackling the bigger issues.
- Book read
- John Green — Looking for Alaska
- First line
- The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party.