Looking for Alaska- Ruby Trujillo

Summary

The book Looking for Alaska by John Green is split into two sections, Before and After. It’s structured like a mountain: the Before section is the slope up, the main event at the end of the Before section is the peak, and the After section is the slope down. In the Before section a boy named Miles leaves his “minor” life in Florida to attend Culver Creek Preparatory School, a boarding school in Birmingham, Alabama. At the Creek he meets Alaska, Takumi, and Chip. They become close friends, and teach Miles the culture of the school, which revolves around smoking, drinking, and pranking. On one particular occasion they pull a prank on a group of students known as the Weekday Warriors. While they are hiding out after the prank Miles and his friends discover that Alaska’s mom died right in front of her from an aneurysm, and she didn’t call an ambulance.  This explains why Alaska is so impulsive and can’t keep still; when her mother was dying she did nothing, so now she feels like she has to do everything. At the climax of the book, right before the After section, Alaska and Chip are drinking while Miles watches. Alaska runs out to take a call from her boyfriend. She comes back crying and screaming that she needs to go, and although she is heavily intoxicated, Miles and Chip agree to distract the school dean while she drives away from campus. The next day they find out that she died in a car crash.

The After section explores the consequences of Alaska’s death. Miles and Chip commiserate over their guilt for letting her go. They begin to fail classes due to their grief, and they trying to figure out what happened that night. Was it a suicide? If not, where was she going and what made her leave?  Finally, Chip, Miles, and Takumi pull off a final prank in honor of Alaska.  At the end of the book they all come to terms with their loss and the role they played in it, and move forward in their lives. 

Connection

In looking for Alaska Miles does things like smoke and drink because his friends do them. Miles says to the reader that he buys cigarettes for him and Chip because it keeps Chip from making fun of him for being a “rich kid”. This reminds me a lot of instances when peer pressure affects people. A connection I made to my life was when my sister was hit by a friend of hers because another kid (who he wanted to be friends with) was also mean to her. The book does address that a little bit but, but it is mostly left for the reader to think about.

Recommendations

I would suggest that people read this along with another John Green book because it is his first novel, and in my opinion his later books are better and more accurately represent him as an author. Having said this, I would highly recommend this book to people who enjoy complex, changing, and intriguing characters. I would also recommend this book to people who like suspenseful books.  In the Before section, Green titles his chapters “186 days before,”  or “83 days before,” or “2 days before,” and so on. I was constantly wondering “What is this big event that the entire book revolves around?” I highly recommend this book as a great young adult read.