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If you don’t know what a tuatara is or have never come across the abundance of Star Wars fan fiction available online, then reading John Green’s new book, Turtles All the Way Down, will soon teach you. Though the cryptic title doesn’t give away much, Green’s latest book addresses mental illness, pop culture and the difficulties of adolescent self-definition. More of a “coming to terms” than a “coming of age” story, Green leaves it up to the reader to come to their own understanding of the novel.
Green’s protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl, Aza Holmes, who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The fact that the words “microbe”, “bacteria” and “parasite” are mentioned more than ten times in the first chapter alone is just one of the many explicit, even raw, insights Green offers into what it’s like to be affected by OCD. The inescapability of one’s thoughts is a major theme in this novel, dealt with by Green through the metaphor of a tightening spiral, much like the spiral of anxiety or depression. Over the course of the novel Aza learns that a spiral widens just as much as it tightens, a realisation which becomes the first step in her path to recovery. The book constructs a space in which the effects of mental illness can be, at least, explained and understood. Green explores the experience of living with a mental illness through even the most minute of details. Importantly, the story does nothing to romanticise the crippling effects of OCD – unless you find swallowing hand sanitizer romantic. The last few pages of the book see Green profusely thanking his doctors for helping him manage his own OCD, as well as listing organisations and helplines to support readers affected by the issues discussed in the novel. This is not just a thoughtful addition, but a potentially life-saving one.
However, it is not all so serious in Green’s first novel since the bestseller turned Hollywood film, The Fault In Our Stars. With internal dialogue reminiscent of Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, the story teeters between typical teenage love story, collection of philosophical and literary references, and the at times barely coherent ramblings of a self-proclaimed “crazy person.” The book features themes of love, loss, teenage sexuality, death, responsibility and maturity – and all that accompanies them – while making time for fundamental Star Wars questions, such as “Is Chewbacca a person?” and “Can a human fall in love with a Wookiee?” This is all, of course, mixed with characteristic comedic charm.
The characters are likeable, not for their attributes, but for their weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. Each is delightfully self-absorbed. As we watch their stories unfold and overlap, they struggle to maintain their relationships while trying to keep a hold on their own mental stability. The book is modern and often heart-wrenchingly tender in its descriptions of a twenty-first century teenage romance: the modern courtship that is instant messaging and the beautiful descriptions of the cyber intimacy created by FaceTime. Green continues to appeal to his ever-growing teen and young adult fanbase with this thought provoking novel, a very raw, very real contemporary story. He does so in his typical style: humorous, but not dismissive. Green not only seems to reach out to younger readers all over the world, but portrays teenage lives clearly for older generations, who might otherwise have difficulty in understanding just how different modern teenage life is from what it once was. It can be read whether young or old; it contains something for everyone. You’ll undoubtedly go to bed feeling sentimental and slightly weepy on finishing this novel. It is a story with the potential to leave you questioning not only the way you perceive yourself and others, but your relationship with the world, as well.
