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Turtles All the Way Down Hardcover – October 10, 2017
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“So surprising and moving and true that I became completely unstrung.” – The New York Times
Named a best book of the year by: The New York Times, NPR, TIME, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Southern Living, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, A.V. Club, Bustle, BuzzFeed, Vulture, and many more!
JOHN GREEN, the acclaimed author of Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, returns with a story of shattering, unflinching clarity in this brilliant novel of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship.
Aza Holmes never intended to pursue the disappearance of fugitive billionaire Russell Pickett, but there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward at stake and her Best and Most Fearless Friend, Daisy, is eager to investigate. So together, they navigate the short distance and broad divides that separate them from Pickett’s son Davis.
Aza is trying. She is trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good student, and maybe even a good detective, while also living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDutton Books for Young Readers
- Publication dateOctober 10, 2017
- Grade level9 - 12
- Reading age14 - 17 years
- Dimensions5.75 x 1.11 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100525555366
- ISBN-13978-0525555360
- Lexile measure840L
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The Anthropocene Reviewed | Turtles All the Way Down | The Fault in Our Stars | Looking for Alaska | Paper Towns | An Abundance of Katherines | |
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John Green’s nonfiction debut is a masterful and deeply moving collection of personal essays about falling in love with the world. “The perfect book for right now.” | Aza is living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts. Told with shattering, unflinching clarity, this is a brilliant exploration of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship. | “The greatest romance story of this decade.” Hazel and Augustus meet at support group for teens with cancer. | Last words and first loves at boarding school. John Green’s award-winning, genre-defining debut. | Winner of the Edgar Award. Margo summons Q for an ingenious night of revenge. When the new day breaks, Margo has disappeared. But there are clues—and they’re for Q. | An ingeniously layered comic novel about love, friendship, mathematical theorems, and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. |
John Green: The Complete Collection Box Set | |
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The deluxe 5-book set is the definitive collection of John Green’s critically acclaimed fiction. |
Editorial Reviews
Review
A New York Times Notable Book • A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of the Year • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A TIME Best Book of the Year • A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year • A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year • An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year • A Seventeen Best Book of the Year • A Southern Living Best Book of the Year • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year • A Booklist Editors' Choice Selection • A BookPage Best Book of the Year • An SLJ Best Book of the Year • An A.V. Club Best Book of the Year • A Bustle Best Book of the Year • A BuzzFeed Best Book of the Year • A Pop Sugar Best Book of the Year • A Vulture Best Book of the Year
#1 New York Times Bestseller • #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller • #1 International Bestseller
Featured on 60 Minutes, Fresh Air, Studio 360, Good Morning America, The TODAY Show
“A tender story about learning to cope when the world feels out of control.” —People
“Green finds the language to describe the indescribable. . . . A must-read for those struggling with mental illness, or for their friends and family.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A powerful tale for teens (and adults) about anxiety, love and friendship.” —The Los Angeles Times
“Wrenching and Revelatory.” —The New York Times
“Tender, wise, and hopeful.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A new modern classic.” —The Guardian
“A thoughtful look at mental illness and a debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder that doesn’t ask but makes you feel the constant struggles of its main character.’” —USA Today
“Turtles delivers a lesson that we so desperately need right now: Yes, it is okay not to be okay…. John Green has crafted a dynamic novel that is deeply honest, sometimes painful, and always thoughtful.” —Mashable
“Green does more than write about; he endeavours to write inside…. No matter where you are on the spiral—and we’re all somewhere—Green’s novel makes the trip, either up or down, a less solitary experience.” —The Globe and Mail
“This novel is by far [Green’s] most difficult to read. It’s also his most astonishing. . . . So surprising and moving and true that I became completely unstrung. . . . One needn’t be suffering like Aza to identify with it. One need only be human.” —Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
“Green’s most authentic and most ambitious work to date.” —Bustle
“An existential teenage scream.” —Vox
“Funny, clever, and populated with endearing characters.” —Entertainment Weekly
“An incredibly powerful tale of the pain of mental illness, the pressures of youth, and coming of age when you feel like you’re coming undone.” —Shelf Awareness
★ “A richly rewarding read…the most mature of Green’s work to date and deserving of all the accolades that are sure to come its way.” —Booklist
★ “In an age where troubling events happen almost weekly, this deeply empathetic novel about learning to live with demons and love one’s imperfect self is timely and important.” —Publishers Weekly
★ “A deeply resonant and powerful novel that will inform and enlighten readers even as it breaks their hearts. A must-buy.” —School Library Journal
Praise for John Green
- 50 million books in print worldwide -
#1 New York Times Bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller
#1 USA Today Bestseller
#1 International Bestseller
★ Michael L. Printz Award Winner
★ Michael L. Printz Honor Winner
★ Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
★ TIME 100 Most Influential People
★ Forbes Celebrity 100
★ NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels
★ TIME Magazine's 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time
Critical acclaim for The Fault in Our Stars:
“Damn near genius . . . The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine
“This is a book that breaks your heart—not by wearing it down, but by making it bigger until it bursts.” —The Atlantic
“Remarkable . . . A pitch-perfect, elegiac comedy.” —USA Today
“[Green’s] voice is so compulsively readable that it defies categorization. You will be thankful for the little infinity you spend inside this book.” —NPR.org
“John Green deftly mixes the profound and the quotidian in this tough, touching valentine to the human spirit.” —The Washington Post
“[Green] shows us true love—two teenagers helping and accepting each other through the most humiliating physical and emotional ordeals—and it is far more romantic than any sunset on the beach.” —New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
ONE
At the time I first realized I might be fictional, my weekdays were spent at a publicly funded institution on the north side of Indianapolis called White River High School, where I was required to eat lunch at a particular time—between 12:37 p.m. and 1:14 p.m.—by forces so much larger than myself that I couldn’t even begin to identify them. If those forces had given me a different lunch period, or if the tablemates who helped author my fate had chosen a different topic of conversation that September day, I would’ve met a different end—or at least a different middle. But I was -beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.
Of course, you pretend to be the author. You have to. You think, I now choose to go to lunch, when that monotone beep rings from on high at 12:37. But really, the bell decides. You think you’re the painter, but you’re the canvas.
Hundreds of voices were shouting over one another in the cafeteria, so that the conversation became mere sound, the rushing of a river over rocks. And as I sat beneath fluorescent cylinders spewing aggressively artificial light, I thought about how we all believed ourselves to be the hero of some personal epic, when in fact we were basically identical organisms colonizing a vast and windowless room that smelled of Lysol and lard.
I was eating a peanut butter and honey sandwich and drinking a Dr Pepper. To be honest, I find the whole process of masticating plants and animals and then shoving them down my esophagus kind of disgusting, so I was trying not to think about the fact that I was eating, which is a form of thinking about it.
Across the table from me, Mychal Turner was scribbling in a yellow-paper notebook. Our lunch table was like a long-running play on Broadway: The cast changed over the years, but the roles never did. Mychal was The Artsy One. He was talking with Daisy Ramirez, who’d played the role of my Best and Most Fearless Friend since elementary school, but I couldn’t follow their conversation over the noise of all the others.
What was my part in this play? The Sidekick. I was Daisy’s Friend, or Ms. Holmes’s Daughter. I was somebody’s something.
I felt my stomach begin to work on the sandwich, and even over everybody’s talking, I could hear it digesting, all the bacteria chewing the slime of peanut butter—the students inside of me eating at my internal cafeteria. A shiver convulsed through me.
“Didn’t you go to camp with him?” Daisy asked me.
“With who?”
“Davis Pickett,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“Aren’t you listening?” Daisy asked. I am listening, I thought, to the cacophony of my digestive tract. Of course I’d long known that I was playing host to a massive collection of parasitic organisms, but I didn’t much like being reminded of it. By cell count, humans are approximately 50 percent microbial, meaning that about half of the cells that make you up are not yours at all. There are something like a thousand times more microbes living in my particular biome than there are human beings on earth, and it often seems like I can feel them living and breeding and dying in and on me. I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and tried to control my breathing. Admittedly, I have some anxiety problems, but I would argue it isn’t irrational to be concerned about the fact that you are a skin-encased bacterial colony.
Mychal said, “His dad was about to be arrested for bribery or something, but the night before the raid he disappeared. There’s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward out for him.”
“And you know his kid,” Daisy said.
“Knew him,” I answered.
I watched Daisy attack her school-provided rectangular pizza and green beans with a fork. She kept glancing up at me, her eyes widening as if to say, Well ? I could tell she wanted me to ask her about something, but I couldn’t tell what, because my stomach wouldn’t shut up, which was forcing me deep inside a worry that I’d somehow contracted a parasitic infection.
I could half hear Mychal telling Daisy about his new art project, in which he was using Photoshop to average the faces of a hundred people named Mychal, and the average of their faces would be this new, one-hundred-and-first Mychal, which was an interesting idea, and I wanted to listen, but the cafeteria was so loud, and I couldn’t stop wondering whether there was something wrong with the microbial balance of power inside me.
Excessive abdominal noise is an uncommon, but not unprecedented, presenting symptom of infection with the bacteria Clostridium difficile, which can be fatal. I pulled out my phone and searched “human microbiome” to reread Wikipedia’s introduction to the trillions of microorganisms currently inside me. I clicked over to the article about C. diff, scrolling to the part about how most C. diff infections occur in hospitals. I scrolled down farther to a list of symptoms, none of which I had, except for the excessive abdominal noises, although I knew from previous searches that the Cleveland Clinic had reported the case of one person who’d died of C. diff after presenting at the hospital with only abdominal pain and fever. I reminded myself that I didn’t have a fever, and my self replied: You don’t have a fever YET.
At the cafeteria, where a shrinking slice of my consciousness still resided, Daisy was telling Mychal that his averaging project shouldn’t be about people named Mychal but about imprisoned men who’d later been exonerated. “It’ll be easier, anyway,” she said, “because they all have mug shots taken from the same angle, and then it’s not just about names but about race and class and mass incarceration,” and Mychal was like, “You’re a genius, Daisy,” and she said, “You sound surprised,” and meanwhile I was thinking that if half the cells inside of you are not you, doesn’t that challenge the whole notion of me as a singular pronoun, let alone as the author of my fate? And I fell pretty far down that recursive wormhole until it transported me completely out of the White River High School cafeteria into some non-sensorial place only properly crazy people get to visit.
Ever since I was little, I’ve pressed my right thumbnail into the finger pad of my middle finger, and so now there’s this weird callus over my fingerprint. After so many years of doing this, I can open up a crack in the skin really easily, so I cover it up with a Band-Aid to try to prevent infection. But sometimes I get worried that there already is an infection, and so I need to drain it, and the only way to do that is to reopen the wound and press out any blood that will come. Once I start thinking about splitting the skin apart, I literally cannot not do it. I apologize for the double negative, but it’s a real double negative of a situation, a bind from which negating the negation is truly the only escape. So anyway, I started to want to feel my thumbnail biting into the skin of my finger pad, and I knew that resistance was more or less futile, so beneath the cafeteria table, I slipped the Band-Aid off my finger and dug my thumbnail into the callused skin until I felt the crack open.
“Holmesy,” Daisy said. I looked up at her. “We’re almost through lunch and you haven’t even mentioned my hair.” She shook out her hair, with so-red-they-were-pink highlights. Right. She’d dyed her hair.
I swum up out of the depths and said, “It’s bold.”
“I know, right? It says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen and also people who do not identify as ladies or gentlemen, Daisy Ramirez won’t break her promises, but she will break your heart.” Daisy’s self-proclaimed life motto was “Break Hearts, Not Promises.” She kept threatening to get it tattooed on her ankle when she turned eighteen. Daisy turned back to Mychal, and I to my thoughts. The stomach grumbling had grown, if anything, louder. I felt like I might vomit. For someone who actively dislikes bodily fluids, I throw up quite a lot.
“Holmesy, you okay?” Daisy asked. I nodded. Sometimes I wondered why she liked me, or at least tolerated me. Why any of them did. Even I found myself annoying.
I could feel sweat sprouting from my forehead, and once I begin to sweat, it’s impossible to stop. I’ll keep sweating for hours, and not just my face or my armpits. My neck sweats. My boobs sweat. My calves sweat. Maybe I did have a fever.
Beneath the table, I slid the old Band-Aid into my pocket and, without looking, pulled out a new one, unwrapped it, and then glanced down to apply it to my finger. All the while, I was breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, in the manner advised by Dr. Karen Singh, exhaling at a pace “that would make a candle flicker but not go out. Imagine that candle, Aza, flickering from your breath but still there, always there.” So I tried that, but the thought spiral kept tightening anyway. I could hear Dr. Singh saying I shouldn’t get out my phone, that I mustn’t look up the same questions over and over, but I got it out anyway, and reread the “Human Microbiota” Wikipedia article.
The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.
I sealed the Ziploc bag around the last quarter of my sandwich, got up, and tossed it into an overfilled trash can. I heard a voice from behind me. “How concerned should I be that you haven’t said more than two words in a row all day?”
“Thought spiral,” I mumbled in reply. Daisy had known me since we were six, long enough to get it.
“I figured. Sorry, man. Let’s hang out today.”
This girl Molly walked up to us, smiling, and said, “Uh, Daisy, just FYI, your Kool-Aid dye job is staining your shirt.”
Daisy looked down at her shoulders, and indeed, her striped top had turned pink in spots. She flinched for a second, then straightened her spine. “Yeah, it’s part of the look, Molly. Stained shirts are huge in Paris right now.” She turned away from Molly and said, “Right, so we’ll go to your house and watch Star Wars: Rebels.” Daisy was really into Star Wars—and not just the movies, but also the books and the animated shows and the kids’ show where they’re all made out of Lego. Like, she wrote fan fiction about Chewbacca’s love life. “And we will improve your mood until you are able to say three or even four words in a row; sound good?”
“Sounds good.”
“And then you can take me to work. Sorry, but I need a ride.”
“Okay.” I wanted to say more, but the thoughts kept coming, unbidden and unwanted. If I’d been the author, I would’ve stopped thinking about my microbiome. I would’ve told Daisy how much I liked her idea for Mychal’s art project, and I would’ve told her that I did remember Davis Pickett, that I remembered being eleven and carrying a vague but constant fear. I would’ve told her that I remembered once at camp lying next to Davis on the edge of a dock, our legs dangling over, our backs against the rough-hewn planks of wood, staring together up at a cloudless summer sky. I would’ve told her that Davis and I never talked much, or even looked at each other, but it didn’t matter, because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe more intimate than eye contact anyway. Anybody can look at you. It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.
Product details
- Publisher : Dutton Books for Young Readers; First Edition (October 10, 2017)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0525555366
- ISBN-13 : 978-0525555360
- Reading age : 14 - 17 years
- Lexile measure : 840L
- Grade level : 9 - 12
- Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.75 x 1.11 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #99,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
John Green is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with David Levithan), and The Fault in Our Stars. His many accolades include the Printz Medal, a Printz Honor, and the Edgar Award. John has twice been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and was selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. With his brother, Hank, John is one half of the Vlogbrothers (youtube.com/vlogbrothers) and co-created the online educational series CrashCourse (youtube.com/crashcourse). You can join the millions who follow him on Twitter @johngreen and Instagram @johngreenwritesbooks or visit him online at johngreenbooks.com.
John lives with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book insightful and introspective, tackling important topics like mental health and friendships. They praise the writing style as well-written and quick. The characters are relatable and dimensional. The story is emotional and touching, with vivid portrayals of feelings. Many readers describe the book as engaging and entertaining, making it great for both teens and adults. Overall, customers appreciate the authenticity of the story and its portrayal of mental illness.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book insightful and engaging. They say it helps readers understand mental illness and friendships. The writing style is casual yet profound, with thought-provoking one-liners. Readers appreciate the serious yet humorous themes and Green's signature quirky yet poignant elements.
"John Green is a talented writer with the ability to put together a gripping story and well-drawn characters...." Read more
"...Turtles All the Way Down is romantic. It is comical. It is motivational. It is devastating. It is a mystery...." Read more
"...It is an introspective book. There wasn't a ton of action and I guessed correctly on some of the major plot points, but that didn't matter...." Read more
"...Well, this is that story. Plus, it’s funny, sweet, sad, and addresses a serious topic, that of mental health...." Read more
Customers enjoy the writing style. They find it well-written, quick, and funny. The writing is clear and accurate, depicting teenage life accurately.
"...John Green's writing is like prose...." Read more
"...through the book until the very end, partly because he is a good writer, but also because you DO want to know how it ends...." Read more
"John Green has done it again. Written an exceptional book...." Read more
"...John is a fantastic writer, he knows how to write and how to give emotion to a story. It is has been his forte ever since Looking For Alaska...." Read more
Customers find the characters relatable and dimensional. They appreciate the accurate portrayal of mental illness and the first-person narration that allows readers to see into the main character's head. The book is described as an easy read that does a good job of showing a teen with anxiety and OCD.
"...writer with the ability to put together a gripping story and well-drawn characters...." Read more
"...It was so realistically portrayed that it triggered a thought spiral for me so definitely read with care if you’re also an ownvoices reader...." Read more
"...John Green didn’t disappoint. The plot was intriguing, I fell in love with the characters, and I couldn’t put it down...." Read more
"This book was a quick read with relatable characters, albeit predictable. Mental health aspect of the story added overall value." Read more
Customers find the story touching and emotional. They appreciate the author's ability to capture the feelings vividly. The ending makes them cry, and the book is described as a brilliant novel about love, resilience, and hope.
"...It is comical. It is motivational. It is devastating. It is a mystery. But most of all, it is a story about friendship...." Read more
"...Well, this is that story. Plus, it’s funny, sweet, sad, and addresses a serious topic, that of mental health...." Read more
"...John is a fantastic writer, he knows how to write and how to give emotion to a story. It is has been his forte ever since Looking For Alaska...." Read more
"...The characters begin and end the same way, and the love stories are becoming so similar in each and every one of John Green's books that it is quite..." Read more
Customers enjoy the book for teens and adults. They find it a captivating, romantic read about teenagers, growing up, and friendship. The story captures the feeling of young adulthood, with its adolescent anxiety and struggles.
"...The book is in the young adult genre. Turtles All the Way Down is romantic. It is comical. It is motivational. It is devastating...." Read more
"...John Green is so incredibly skilled at capturing that feeling of young adulthood...." Read more
"...this title will make sense to you once you read the book, targeted toward young adults, but so was THE FAULT AMONG OUR STARS, and one, that didn’t..." Read more
"...so many years because it captured something special and important about being a teenager...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and entertaining. They describe it as a fun mystery that explains OCD in a satisfying way. The book provides a good distraction and is never boring or tiresome for them.
"...Daisy is loud, rambunctious, and confident. Aza is worrisome, calm, and quiet...." Read more
"Captures the essence of OCD within a fun mystery...." Read more
"...’s work will almost certainly love this novel—it features all of the quirky yet poignant elements for which his novels are known and admired...." Read more
"...it is an enjoyable read with a conclusion that was at the same time satisfying and heartbreaking." Read more
Customers find the book authentic and believable. They describe the struggles as realistic and sympathetic. The author's honest perspective is appreciated.
"...from mental illness since he was a teenager brings a authenticity to the story...." Read more
"...As someone with anxiety, this book gave me a sense of comfort and validation along with entertainment...." Read more
"...This book is just so beautifully written. It's real, it's sad, it's broken, and it's hopeful...." Read more
"...I appreciate how John Green portrays mental illness with realism and deeply detailed prose...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the storyline. Some find it intriguing and well-written, with a mystery and inner turmoil. Others feel the narrative is disjointed and abrupt, with a disappointing subplot and lack of chemistry between the characters.
"...is pretty standard, although it does do a good job of making sense of strange thoughts and actions, and how Aza manages to undermine her own goals...." Read more
"...I do feel that the ending of the story felt quite abrupt, and frankly I was caught off guard at the sudden ending even though it felt right...." Read more
"...It is comical. It is motivational. It is devastating. It is a mystery. But most of all, it is a story about friendship...." Read more
"...The story it tells is deceptively simple and relatively plot-less, which is quite problematic for a YA novel...." Read more
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Good book but bought new and arrived damaged
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2019John Green is a talented writer with the ability to put together a gripping story and well-drawn characters. Turtles All the Way Down emphasizes the theme of mental illness, and interviews with Green have focused on how the obsessive compulsive disorder of the main character, Aza, reflects his own OCD. But the novel is as much about the loss of a parent and about how great wealth alters one's life and makes it difficult to assess the motives of other people who are friendly. It is Davis Pickett who lives in great wealth, but his father Russell has gone missing. Aza goes to the same school as Davis, and she used to have a crush on him. Her best friend Daisy wants to set them up together. Things quickly get complicated.
Of course, there is romance, and while 16 year old Aza wants to kiss Davis, she can't stop thinking about the impact the exchange of saliva will have on her body and it alarms her so much that she can't bear it. She gets very self-involved and has to see her psychiatrist regularly, and she has learned various techniques to get her emotions under control. She has also been prescribed medication, which she rarely takes. She lives with her mother, who teaches at her school, and they have a good relationship, but Aza often withholds a lot of information from her. It makes it more difficult for her mother to help her. During the novel, Aza's problems get more serious and her behavior becomes especially bizarre. But there were times when she was more able to cope with her feelings and she hopes to return to such a state in the future.
Aza has a strong relationship with Daisy and they often hang out together a lot. Daisy is far more outgoing than Aza and talks a lot, but there are tensions in the friendship. Aza is mostly focused on her own problems and pays little attention to Daisy's life. Eventually, in a crucial scene, Daisy voices her resentment of Aza's self-obsession. Aza's mental struggles mean that she has little energy to follow the lives of her friends in a real way, and Daisy questions whether they have a real friendship. It's a difficult and important question. It gets resolved, to an extent, with the idea that despite her limitations, Aza still has a lot to offer in a friendship.
What's strong about Turtles All the Way Down is not the description of the mental illness itself, which is pretty standard, although it does do a good job of making sense of strange thoughts and actions, and how Aza manages to undermine her own goals. The strength is more in the way that Green shows the impact of Aza's mental illness on her relationships -- with her mother, friend and boyfriend, and even with herself. There's a similar inspection of the effect of great wealth and an unloving father on the lives of Davis and his younger brother. While the material benefits of money are very clear, Green is good at showing that it can make friendship much more difficult. Aza's mother is very suspicious of Davis, expecting that he will just want to exploit her daughter, and she is wrong about that. Aza is much more ready to take Davis at face value, but the money causes plenty of problems. It is probably rarer for YA novels to inspect the problems that come with wealth than it is for them to address mental illness, so it is this theme that makes Turtles All the Way Down more unusual. I strongly recommend this book.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2018Turtles All the Way Down is powerful and simple all at the same time. It is about Aza, a teenager struggling with mental illness, her best friend Daisy, and her past friend Davis. Davis’s father disappears, running from persecution of crimes he committed while earning his millions of dollars. Daisy and Aza jump into the mystery, hoping to receive the one hundred thousand dollar reward. The book is in the young adult genre.
Turtles All the Way Down is romantic. It is comical. It is motivational. It is devastating. It is a mystery. But most of all, it is a story about friendship. Daisy and Aza have always been friends, but not the best communicators. Despite everything, they come out stronger than before. Even when everyone else cannot get to Aza and she loses people and things she loves, Daisy is there. They are character foils of each other. Daisy is loud, rambunctious, and confident. Aza is worrisome, calm, and quiet. They balance each other just like Enkidu and Gilgamesh in the classic story Gilgamesh.
John Green explores the idea of mental health and its effect on many people in a friend group. Aza’s mom worries about her daughter. Daisy periodically gets annoyed with her friend’s “selfish behavior”. Davis accepts Aza as she is but has worries that she does not fancy him. Aza resents herself and believes that everyone thinks she is crazy. In the end, John Green finds a way to present the reader with this idea: it is okay not to be okay. He also adds, “your now is not your forever,” showing the reader that their situation is not permanent and will get better.
Overall, Turtles all the Way Down is about life’s abstract ideas. It is about describing the indescribable. John Green supplies the reader with devastation, love, and friendship. It takes the reader on a rollercoaster of emotions. I recommend this book to any young adult who has a mental illness or would like to learn more about them.
Top reviews from other countries
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Leticia Nogueira Machado TamaniniReviewed in Brazil on November 10, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars Livro
Ótimo, boa qualidade e chegou rápido e bem embalado
- MayReviewed in the Netherlands on February 13, 2021
4.0 out of 5 stars good delivery, nice writing
good delivery etc. loved this writing more than john green's other books.
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Huss AudreyReviewed in France on January 13, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Adoré !!!!
J'ai beaucoup aime ce livre
Au debut on prend le temps de s'habituer aux personnages et leur quotidien puis vers la suite de l'histoire on s'interesse aux reflexions faites par chacuns d'entres eux. De plus l'enquete est secondaire ce qui laisse plus d'espace pour les personnages et leurs relations tout faisant un fil conducteur.
Le livre est juste magnifique et John Green ecrit toujours aussi bien
Je recommande vraiment
- Canadian customerReviewed in Canada on November 14, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars So relatable and immersive!
A compelling story with such a unique and relatable voice from the main character. Loved it! Eager to read more from this author.
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Cliente AmazonReviewed in Spain on October 18, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars un autor conocido por la lectora
El libro llego en buenas condiciones, y en el tiempo estimado, ya que lo habiamos comprado en pre-venta.
Lo escogio mi hija, por que lo queria leer en inglés, y escogio este por que havia leido otro libro, en castellano, de este autor.