October 19, 2017
When I was 11, I read John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars,” and became obsessed with Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters. Since then, I proceeded to read every one of John Green’s other works with similar vigor, and watch the hundreds of YouTube videos he and his brother, Hank Green, made for their channel.
However, over the last couple of years, my reading taste matured, and I grew out of Green’s overwrought quotable lines and heart-aching melodrama. His novels, I decided, portrayed teenage characters in an overly grandiose light, sprinkling in depressing Emily Dickinson quotes every four pages to make the characters seem smart, which in turn made the reader feel smart for understanding them.
I also had a problem with how Green portrayed the main characters’ romantic interests, as every book seemed to include a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” trope, where female characters were overly idealized for their quirks and habits.
Despite my many critiques and complaints, I was thoroughly excited for the first John Green book release in six years. I was looking forward to reading Green’s intriguing plots, and more of his cynical humor.
I finished the book in one sitting, and was pleasantly surprised. Romance took a backseat in “Turtles All the Way Down” as the novel focused primarily on the main character’s struggle with mental illness — specifically OCD.
Aza Holmes, a junior in high school, has an obsessive fear of contracting C. diff, or clostridium difficile colitis, a bacterial disease that causes diarrhea and fever. The logistics of how she could get the illness don’t seem to matter to her, and she spends hours upon hours thinking about the billions of microbes in her body, and picking at the constantly bleeding cut on her finger she made in seventh grade. The book follows her and her “Best and Most Fearless Friend” Daisy as they solve the mystery of the missing billionaire father of Aza’s love interest, Davis Picket.
Despite the fact that I myself have never had to deal with any sort of OCD, Aza’s tale struck a chord with me. Unlike other John Green books, where the characters come off overly pretentious and perfect, Aza is genuinely a disaster. None of her characteristics are idealized, and her damaging habits are viewed as what they are: mental illness.
Even those who miss Green’s overly flowery quotes will not be disappointed as there are hundreds of new emotionally wrought quotes sprinkled periodically throughout. Green’s unrealistically intelligent and quirky teenagers return in the novel too, with Daisy being a well-respected “Star Wars” fanfiction author. However, Green seems to recognize more normal teenage issues and tones down his melodramaticism in the novel.
Out of all of John Green’s novels, “Turtles All the Way Down” is the most realistic. Instead of pompous teenagers going on metaphorically resonant adventures to question their own role in the world, Aza’s struggle with her own mental health and her detachment from those who care about her–no matter how hard she tries–provides a more relatable and emotional storyline to follow.
Most of the conflict in the novel is within herself; and her development, both in her illness and as a character, brings attention to how mental illness manifests itself in an otherwise capable girl.
Overall, “Turtles All the Way Down” is John Green’s best work yet. While not as heartbreaking as “The Fault in Our Stars,” the novel is able to connect with the reader in a more tangible way. For once, Green’s character isn’t characterized by the person she loves, or her ability to quote famous poets, but instead by her bravery and persistence in her struggle with mental illness.
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