John Green's Looking for Alaska
A Frodo's Notebook Book Review
by Timothy Rezendes - Managing Editor

We meet Miles Halter "one hundred thirty-six days before." Before what we have no idea, but as we continue through John Green's debut novel, Looking for Alaska, we see that each section is labeled with the number of days "before." We follow Miles from his parents' home in Florida to his first year at Alabama boarding school Culver Creek. Miles is bored with his life at home and is eager to get out of his house and away to school. When his parents ask him why he decided to go to Culver Creek after two years at a public high school, the only way he can think to explain it to them is to quote the last words of poet François Rabelais: I go to seek a Great Perhaps.

Miles is a fan of last words. He knows the last words of hundreds of historical figures, but it is the last words of two people that shape him. Rabelais's dying declaration drives him to Culver Creek and the adventures that he finds there, and the final question of Simón Bolívar, which he learns from his new acquaintance Alaska Young, shortly after their meeting, shapes his understanding of both his day to day experiences and the most significant events in his life. With his dying breath, Bolívar is said to have asked, How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?

Clearly, a significant event in Miles's life is approaching. Not only are the sections marked in numbers of days "before," but there is a gray page, just visible along the right edge of the book, marking the boundary between "before" and "after." As the distance between the current page and that gray page shrinks, the tension inevitably mounts. An event worthy of delimiting one's life in such a way that everything else is either "before" it or "after" it is unlikely to pass without great excitement, whether for good or for ill.

I had the unfortunate luck to reach that gray page (bearing only the word "after," in lowercase, white letters) late on a night before I had to work. I knew if I turned that page I would be unable to stop reading before I reached the end of the book. I needed to sleep, so I closed the cover and turned out my bedside light. Though there are few clues at the story's outset as to what momentous event we are inexorably approaching, by the time the section labeled "one day before" closes, there is little doubt as to what is about to occur. I knew what was beyond that gray page; sleep took its time in coming.

On the back cover of Looking for Alaska, the paragraph describing Miles, his friends, and his introduction to Culver Creek follows the word "before." Following "after" are only five words: Nothing is ever the same.

I am not suggesting that your life will be radically changed by reading Looking for Alaska. I am suggesting, however, that you read it. In 2006, the book won the ALA's Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature, and it is no wonder. Green's writing is at once subtly suspenseful and laugh-out-loud funny. He has masterfully captured the ups and downs of teenage life. His portrayal of the giddy high of being the perpetrator of a prank, the humiliating low of being the victim of one, the false promises of lust, and the first taste of love, of cigarettes, of booze, is engagingly real. We rejoice with Miles and his friends, we hurt with them, and, most importantly, we learn with them. Bolívar's question about escaping the labyrinth doesn't just haunt Miles; it pervades the book. So, when we reach one hundred thirty-six days after, we have learned something from Miles Halter, from Alaska Young, and from the people—both those physically close and those temporally distant—from whom they have learned, something about the labyrinth and how me might make our way toward its end.

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