Just Finished Reading Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Having already read his 2004 young adult novel Looking for Alaska about three years ago, I was intrigued by a recent 60 Minutes interview with author John Green, who discussed his ongoing YouTube project as well as his own difficulties with obsessive-compulsive disorder.  And he revealed that this topic is a prominent feature of his 2017 book Turtles All the Way Down...I filed that one away in my mind.  While waiting for our plane to Indianapolis a couple of Wednesdays ago in the Orlando airport bookstand, I ran across this novel and henceforth decided to delve into it and see what all the hoopla was about.  Well, I just finished reading it and have my own reactions...

First of all, I heartily recommend Turtles All the Way Down, which incidentally is another young adult novel...I generally dig this genre.  It is coincidentally set in Indianapolis where high school upperclassman Aza Holmes, a straight-A student, has a big problem: part of her mind believes that the microorganisms teeming within her body (and everyone's, for that matter) will eventually consume her...particularly a dangerous bacteria called C. diff....although intellectually she is aware that it's all abnormal thinking. Still, she listens to the thoughts in her head telling her how dangerous contact with others is and continually cuts the healing scab in her finger, applies sanitizer, and rebandages it.  Her father died a few years earlier of a heart attack and her mother, a math teacher at the same school, understands her OCD as she has her attend therapy sessions regularly along with prescribed medication, medication Aza usually forgoes.  Aza has a close friend, Daisy Ramirez, who challenges her to look for her early childhood friend, Davis Pickett, after his wealthy father disappeared to avoid arrest on corruption charges...you see, $100,000 has been offered for anyone finding him.  So there are two main subplots intertwining themselves through this story: Aza's obsessive-compulsive disorder, as experienced by herself, and the mystery of Russell Pickett's disappearance combined with the rekindled relationship between Davis and Aza.  I felt that John Green did a masterful job of making all the main characters in the book sympathetic, although in the area of believability I think he might of taken some liberties.  For example, he pretty much painted a picture in this story...as he did in Looking for Alaska...of the children being oh-so learned and philosophically deep, especially as opposed to the relatively dim-witted and stuck-in-their-ways adults around them.  Davis is deeply rooted in classic literature and poetry, writing stuff on his blogs that one might expect a literary scholar to compose.  And Daisy, who in normal discourse sounds a bit shallow and impulsive, has written several short stories (based on the Star Wars Wookiee character)...with thousands of fans worldwide...by painstakingly typing them out on her smartphone.  Then again, maybe this precociousness is typical of this generation, who knows.  I did like these "super" characters, though...

As for Aza's preoccupation with what was going on in her body on a microscopic level, I think that this is an example of wrongly applying our notions of what is aesthetically pleasing or disgusting on our own scale to a completely different, alien scale.  Yes, although we all have billions of miniscule creepy-crawly critters inside us...and always will as long as we are alive...most of us can reconcile ourselves to this without it consuming our thoughts, while others (like Aza) cannot...

Turtles All the Way Down was a good investment of my reading time and I look forward to hearing others' reactions to it.  Go ahead and pick up a copy, you know you want to...