It is amazing what a good writer can pull off! This fairly short novel – just over 200 pages – would have us believe that our protagonist, child prodigy Colin Singleton, by the time he has graduated from high school, has dated and been dumped by 19 Katherines. It seems amazing that anyone could have known more Kathrines than he has had years of life; let alone dated so many of them.
Colin Singleton’s type was not physical but linguistic: he liked Katherines. And not Katies or Kats or Kitties of Cathys or Rynns or Trinas or Kays or Kates or, God forbid, Catherines. K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. He had dated nineteen girls. All of them had been named Katherine. And all of them – every single solitary one – had dumped him
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And yet, incredibly, near the end of the book when Colin tells his story about each and every Katherine since he was 8 years old, it is just plausible – or plausible in the hands of a master storyteller anyway (John Green, not Colin!).
After Kathrine XIX dumps him, right after high school graduation, Colin is heart-broken, so his best friend Hassan – a Lebanese who is pudgy, popular and amusing – drags him off on a roadtrip. Amazingly, both sets of parents ask few questions and happily acquiesce. John Green does not intend this novel to be about this part of the story, so he glosses over it neatly. The roadtrip takes these 2 lads from Chicago to Gunshot, Tennessee, where they stop because Colin wants to see the advertised grave of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, which is supposedly there. They pay 11 dollars per person to Lindsey who minds the grocery store and conducts the hourly tours, and in walking to the grave, Colin trips and falls, and Lindsey attends to his injuries because she says she is a paramedic in training. She takes them home to her house to meet her mum, and it turns out Lindsey and Hollie live in a mansion because Lindsey’s grandfather set up a tampon-string producing factory, which provides jobs for the whole town of Gunshot, and which has clearly made them rich. More suspension of disbelief needed, because Hollie offers a job at 500 dollars a week to both boys, to conduct interviews for 6 hours a day, and they get to stay in her mansion. That however sets the background for all the interesting stuff that happens thereafter.
There are a lot of similarities between this John Green novel and other John Green novels. The protagonist is always quite a special person – someone who is exceptionally bright, usually, exceptionally well read. In this novel, the being exceptionally bright is taken to exceptional heights/lengths – Colin speaks 11 languages, apart from being an anagramming expert and a child prodigy who has won many competitions and featured in a TV program too. He reads fantastically fast, his memory is near perfect, his knowledge is vast for a teenager. He has always learnt extremely fast, and his worry is that although a prodigy, he is no genius, and all the early promise may not come to anything exceptional – he wants to matter. Or do something that matters, so that he matters. Mattering is a big part of what the characters, being young adults, discuss and think about.
Like so many other Green protagonists, Colin is a ‘good guy’, but self centred. He has a wonderful best friend/side kick, who is a confident, charming person in their own right – Green’s best friends always seem more likeable than the protagonists and manage to work their even less privileged lives out far more easily, apparently – and like in other Green novels, there reaches a point where the loyal best friend snaps and has a rant at the protagonist, but the fall-out is always brief, and the best friends remains best friends.
Has it ever crossed your mind, you ungrateful asshole, that when I was mopping up after all your breakups, when I was picking your sorry ass off the floor of your bedroom, when I was listening to your endless rantings and ravings about every fugging girl who ever gave you the time of day, that maybe I was actually doing it for you and not because I’m oh-so desperate to learn of the newest dumping in your life? What problems have you listened to of mind, dillhole? Have you ever sat with me for hours and listened to me whine about being a fat fugger whose best friend ditches him every time a Katherine comes along? Has it ever occurred to you even for the briefest goddam moment that my life might be as bad as yours? Imagine if you weren’t a fugging genius and you were lonely and nobody ever listened to you. So yeah. Kill me. I kissed a girl. And I came home with that story psyched to tell you because I’ve finally got a story of my own after four years of listening to you. And you are a such a self-involved asshole that you can’t for one fugging second realise that my life doesn’t spin around the star of Colin Singleton.
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John Green’s dialogue is one of the strengths of his writing. Even the rants are incredibly readable and plausible. The exchanges between the young adults are wonderfully realistic, even if far more sophisticated than one might expect of 17-18 year olds – but then Green’s protagonists are always matured beyond their chronological age. They also have in common that they are confident, not lacking in self-esteem, given to despairs but knowing these are just life’s passing dramas and that actually they have wonderful families and privileged lives. There is a romance blossoming, as there is in every other Green YA novel, but as always, it is important but not central; what is more central is the characters working out their identities and lives; romances are just part of that, rather than the be-all and end-all, which yet again, shows remarkable emotional maturity, which many adults do not manage! An Abundance of Katherines may not necessarily be one of Green’s best YA novels, but it is still recognisably a Green piece of writing, and as such, still highly readable and charming.
Yay for good young-adult writing! How do you think this compares to the novels you read in your own young-adult period? I remember a few classics: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the Judy Blume books — and I think John Greeen stands up to them very well.
This is a good question. Am racking my brains to see what YA novel I read in my youth. It seems I didn’t know of many – from children’s books like Enid Blyton’s lot to Nancy Drews and Trixie Beldens, of course I read rubbish like Mills and Boons romances too, though that’s not YA genre. I don’t really know if I came across any YA books when I was a young adult myself! In my teen years, books that left impressions on me were like Alex Haley’s Roots, Colleen McCollough’s The Thorn Bird, etc. But those are hardly YA either. I suspect I didn’t have access to YA books in Malaysia, and even after I came to UK at 18, still had not even heard of YA, and would not, for many years! 🙂
But to answer your question, I suspect the std is getting better and better, as YA surely must be getting more and more discerning, no? John Green is just a highly skilled craftsman, he could write anything really, YA just happens to be his chosen genre. And the handful of other YA writers I was recommended like Rainbow Rowell, Louis Sachar, they were extremely good writers too. Am hopeful therefore that as a genre, YA is growing from strength to strength.