Looking For Alaska review ( Spoiler-free)

Miles Halter is the main lead of the story who resides in Florida. He is reclusive and is shown as a boy who wants to seek a ‘Great perhaps’. Miles chooses to attend the Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama to start a fresh life. There he makes his first mate Chip, known as “the Colonel” by all. He nicknamed Miles as “Pudge”(ironic name) and called him with the same name throughout the book. The Colonel introduces him to his friend, Alaska, who was a fierce and enigmatic girl. Miles spontaneously falls in love with her. All of them are then involved in multiple pranks and mishappenings and then, there is the unexpected mid-way surprise. I cannot tell what actually happened as this review is supposed to be spoiler-free but after that event, the book divides into two parts. One Before and one After that event. The first part is kind of happier and funny while another is the one with lots of sorrow and heartbreak

The first part is filled with a number of high school events, the building of relations, the pranks that students perform. In short, the typical high-school environment has been explained. The second part describes what happens after that tragic event, how the truth uncovers and how the lives of everyone involved in it breaks.

The pleasantest thing about Looking for Alaska is that it doesn’t feel like it’s a debut novel of John Green. It has so much more clandestine things to say then the words can explain. John Green has unmistakably shown his best raw talent in this, demonstrating that you can literally emerge like a different person after you finish his book. It is a gripping tale. We all must have read books in which boy meets a girl and they fell in love and get parted but unlike those love tales, This is a tale of true friendship, the consequence of love, the hunger for survival, the void in a relationship.

The story is more about Miles then about Alaska (the title is puzzling). The core point for both of them is looking for ‘labyrinth’. I truly didn’t know about this word at the beginning but then it was used so many times in the book that it made itself clear. A unique thing that John Green has placed as the talent of Miles is that he remembers the last lines of famous persons and no matter how strange it may sound at first place but after reading many such sentences in the book it definitely made me engaged in those last lines.

The only issue that I had with this story was its ending. I felt like tricked. I didn’t expect it to end like that. I kept ruminating about the book for a few days but I think that’s what John wanted so, it’s kinda fine. 

All the characters mentioned in this book feel like in real life. There are no shoddy ones, not even Alaska (though girls are generally shown as cheesy). I liked how the character of Alaska was made bold, mysterious and oftentimes we come across such characters in our lives too, who are strange in their own ways. 

Some famous quotes from the book:

• “The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”

• I go to seek a great perhaps 

• “Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”

• "So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”

• “When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books.”

• “They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting.”

• “I may die young, but at least I'll die smart.”

• “At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.”