I read Looking for Alaska when I was around 14, and yeah, John Green has a way with words that leaves you feeling inspired and special, but looking back on it, the whole Manic Pixie Dream girl schtick is a bit harmful, I think. It glamourizes being "quirky" and "different" and "not altogether there". I think for the impressionable young girl it sends a message that having a mental illness is good. Not that it's okay if you have one, I must stress. That it's /good/. It kinda commodifies it.
TFioS..... Basically - I get it. I get why so many 13-16/s swear by it. It’s a Tragic Lovestory with Amazing Quotes and it’s so deep and meaningful and Inspiring but… it’s sorta lukewarm at best.
The characters are vomit-inducingly pretentious. “Wise beyond their years”, naturally. Prone to pseudo-intellectual and haha-philosophical-HAHA rants.
I don’t know. Maybe seeing as I’m technically no longer a teenager I just missed the window where TFiOS comes across only as a tragic, beautiful love story / people’s struggle to cope with severe/fatal illness. It just comes across… I don’t know. I can’t find a word for it. Distasteful? Intellectual/existential masturbation? Just… “Ugh”, basically.
The novel doesn’t really give you a chance to think for yourself. It immediately jumps to explaining how deep and well thought-out it is. It showers you in Big Words and then assumes you don’t know them in a condescending kind of way.
I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of cancer is but it doesn’t strike me as believable. (Although one of my best friends has had thyroid cancer and she once said to me that it wasn’t at all realistic that they completely didn’t mention any scar from the radical neck dissection, or that they don’t have it in the movie adaptation either. Because it does leave a scar, from pretty mild to downright huge. On the neck. Very visible place, particularly if you’re wearing sundresses and that.)
And I do have to mention that for almost ten years I lived with my father who was very disabled (he passed away almost two years ago now), who shouldn't have lived as long as he did, and the book didn't at all convey the feeling of just.. helplessness when you're faced with death. It all seeemed very superficial, like someone writing about something they've never really experienced, just heard about.
So basically yeah. I didn’t enjoy it. At all. I do admit there were a few moments where it made me chuckle, but they’ve proved to be unremarkable. There were also parts of the story that attempted to tug at my heartstrings (and let me tell you - mine are exceptionally easy to tug on. I cry about everything ever) but I just couldn’t muster up any sympathy for the characters.