John Green is a magician. I can’t properly express my love for this man I’ve never met but Turtles All The Way Down may be his masterpiece.
“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”
Aza suffers from severe anxiety, particularly a fear of contracting C. diff., and lives most of her life inside her own head. Luckily her best friend, Daisy (side bar, John Green continues to write the best best friends in fiction), talks enough for the two of them.
Years ago Aza went to ‘sad camp’ and met a boy named Davis Pickett; in the present day his billionaire father has disappeared following an investigation into his white collar crime activities and there is a $100,000 reward for information that leads to his return. Daisy convinces Aza to use the connection she has with Davis to gain access and solve the mystery of the disappearing billionaire. Aza is hesitant but eventually goes along with the plan.
All the women in my family suffer from various levels of anxiety and this is one of the most realistic depictions of anxiety disorders I’ve read in a long time. I saw an article that John Green used his own battle with OCD as the jumping off point for Aza and his familiarity with anxiety lends an authenticity to his protagonist that is hard to come by. Aza has a particular quirk where she continually reapplies band-aids to a cut on her finger. Before she changes the band-aid she cleans the wound out with hand sanitizer and then fixates on the pain, particularly how the amount of stinging relates to the amount of bacteria in her cut. From ages 16 to 20 I was in my worse mental state and regrettably I self harmed; similarly to Aza I would constantly clean my cuts out with hydrogen peroxide because I feared contracting MRSA. It’s a strange connection to have with a fictional character but it made Aza very real to me.
But this isn’t just a story about a young girl striving to live in the real world instead of inside her head. The mystery of Mr. Pickett’s disappearance is skillfully woven throughout the rest of the story and, like most Green novels, there is a budding romance and a few gut punches. Like The Fault in Our Stars, this one will stick with you for a long time. You don’t need to be a YA or John Green fan to appreciate this story.
“Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out.”
Oh! I’m so glad this got reviewed. I’ve been so looking forward to this and added a bookstore stop to date night this weekend to go buy it!
I was wondering who would review this first. Glad it seems to be getting great reviews.
I was sort of surprised to be first since I didn’t start it until late Wednesday evening and the thirst for new John Green has been strong on CBR for a while now! But it’s very, very good
I’m weirdly not rushing out to read it. I’ve got a ton of books to read first. I’m content to let it wait a little bit. Who knows how long we’ll have to wait for the next one. (Hopefully not as long as six years!)
I really want to read this, but am worried that the depictions of anxiety will be too heavy for me to deal with at the moment, as my own normally fairly low-level anxiety keeps getting more pronounced with my pregnancy hormones coupled with all the constant barrage of bad news in the media (which is also depressing me massively).
I need happy, safe fluffy books at the moment and The Fault in Our Stars pretty much ripped my heart out of my chest and made me cry solidly for the last third of the book, so I can’t imagine this being less affecting, albeit probably in a different way. I think I’m just going to have to accept that there are books that I will probably adore, but that are just not for me at the moment.