A review by danielle_w
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

5.0

John Green's most artful novel- in my estimation, at least. Aza is a teenage girl who lives with a mental illness (he never gives her a label, but it can be inferred from his podcast that Green means her to share his OCD struggle). I wondered how he'd deal with another type of suffering after dealing with cancer in The Fault in Our Stars; this one was unexpectedly hopeful in contrast to the nihilism of TFIOS. This book has every nuance of chronic suffering and friendship, love, and loss in the midst of living with it. The subtle Great Gatsby allusions had my wheels turning from the beginning as the reader faintly gets drawn in to questioning what the unattainable is, and why we want it so much. Though Aza has a mental illness and not a physical one, I have never seen such a relatable, comprehensive experience of chronic illness before in literature. It doesn't get better no matter how much people around her want that to be the narrative. It gets worse, or it just is, and yet life goes on despite it. I gobbled this up and immediately wanted to reread it.
"Love is both how we become a person, and why."