Paper Towns Review

This book is perpetually brilliant. At first I was reluctant to begin reading as the blurb didn't seem too interesting and lacked amazement:

"Who is the real Margo? Quentin Jacobsen has spent a life time loving the magnificent, adventurous Margo Roth Speigleman from afar. So when she opens his bedroom window late one night and summons him to join her on an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. 


After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to find that Margo has not. Always an enigma, she now becomes a mystery and Q soon learns that there are clues to be followed in his search for Margo."

However after reading the book, I have been blown away. It's taken me a week to plough through all 305 pages, whilst juggling school, work and sport. But I've done it and I would do it all again.

Let's get it clear that Q is a very self conscious eighteen year old, with psychologists for parents, he's never been a total mystery but a success, compared to the absurd sex-crazy depressed teenagers you get these days and in these books. You'd assume he'd be very different to Margo whom, you'd assume, is a lot like these teenagers just described. However, as you progress through the book, you learn Margo has touched him and changed him in such a way that he'll never forget.

"Paper Towns" is used as a metaphor in the novel and a powerful one at that. It is used to describe the flimsy attitudes within a town and how it has no deepness. These Paper towns are also connected to the use of "Paper People", people in which have o depth. They only care about popularity, money and wellbeing. By the end of the book Margo reveals to seeing herself as a "Paper Girl", as a reader I was shocked to find that was why she disappeared but I also strongly feel that she is in no way a paper girl. The way I interpreate this metaphor or Paper Towns is that every town is a Paper Town. And, as Margo says, "People make Places, and Place make People". Paper People can turn towns into Paper towns, and Paper Towns can turn People into Paper People.

All slightly confusing, I know. But it gets better. As we never find out the true reason for Margo never wanting to return to Orlando (though she now has Q and Lacey, her best girl friend), I'd like to think that she has too much depth for a paper town and getting out of there quickly will stop her from becoming a paper person. Looking beyond the book, I doubt she ever will. And though Q may return, he will never become a paper person either. I think Margo changed Q from a paper person to a.. well.. Margo.

I think Q sacrifices a lot for Margo, and this is what makes me resent Margo for not wanting to go back to Florida with him. He drives for 21 hours from Orlando to New York, dragging along three of his best friends, nearly getting killed and all this for Margo. To bring her home. When she refuses, I got quite angry as I felt she was turning her back on a guy whom always loved her and had developed into the sort of person who people would dream to be loved by. But then again, I love John Green for making me feel this anger. Because that anger then turns to sadness as you read the final page of the book. I have to admit I was in floods of tears whilst reading. Maybe because the journey wasn't in the road trip, but in the quest to find Margo. As a reader you stick by Q throughout all 305 pages and as it comes to a close, you can't bare to see it end.

"It is in saying these things that keep us from falling apart. And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them. The light rushes out and floods in.


I stand in this parking lot, realizing that I've never been this far from home, and here is the girl I love and cannot follow. I hope this is the hero's errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I've ever done.


I keep thinking she will get into the car, but she doesn't, an she finally turns around to me and I see her soaked eyes. The physical space between us evaporates. We play the broken strings of our instruments one last time.


I feel her hands on my back. And it is dark as I kiss her, but I have my eyes open and so does Margo. She is close enough to me that I can see her, because even now there is the outward sign of the invisible light, even at night in this parking lot on the outskirts of Algoe. After we kiss, our foreheads touch as we stare at each other. Yes, I can se her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness"


I strongly recommend that each and every one of you go out and read this book. Paper Towns by John Green. Green writes so beautifully and I promise you'll never regret reading his work.