Book Review: Turtles All The Way Down

“Actually, the problem is that I can’t lose my mind,” I said. “It’s inescapable.”

-  Aza Holmes, Turtles All The Way Down.

Aza's mind has a knack to go down a spiral that makes her concentrate on the all the microbes living inside her, slowly  digesting the food she eats as she contemplates being fictional while sitting in the school cafeteria and reapplying the bandaid on her finger cut, almost everyday.

Difficult, yes.

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Aza tries to be a good daughter, a good friend and more importantly, she tries to be herself-all the while trying not to slip infinitely down her spiral of thoughts, with an OCD that has her googling the symptoms of diseases she might have gotten as she goes from one school period to the next, we get a glimpse into Aza's mind that she can only define by what it is not. 

Aza's story is written with shattering clarity. You can feel her slipping down  her thoughts and trying (and sometimes failing) to overcome her severe anxiety; this however, does not stop her from trying to solve the mysterious disappearance of the local billionaire, obsessed with his tuatara (almost a lizard but not quite) at the urge of her Best and Most Fearless friend Daisy, who insists that Aza being friends with the billionaire's son when they were kids ups their chance at the big reward for the case. 

The characters are vivid and real. They are not patron saints to give up all for the heroic Good. John Green still refuses to portray the teenagers in his book as anything less than their full potential. They are intelligent, speak their minds, and are invincible in their own way.

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The thing about John Green’s writing is that the characters might just be laying down on the grass, looking up at the sky and what you read is the entire universe in its ecstatic motion slowing down for a bit to reach out to your heart to show the significance of that blatantly simple moment. 

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There are metaphors, of course, à la John Green, but due to the nature of his protagonist's mind in this particular tale, they blend in extraordinarily well with the narrative.

One of the most brilliant aspects of the book is the honesty with which Green has written the story. Right from the paranoid nature of Aza's mind to the unflinching clarity she has during, admittedly, small amounts of time. There are moments where you want to reach out to Aza and shake her away from her self encased thoughts. 

The ending is refreshingly devoid of ever after promises and we have to realise what Aza eventually learns — that life goes on, that we go on. 

Your now is not your forever — you move on; as Aza moves on in the story, anyway.

Turtles All The Way Down is witty, disarmingly honest and a charming story that leaves you in a stupor of all different emotions. You think and you fall and you get back up again with the story.

“You’re both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You’re the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You’re the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody’s something, but you are also your you.”

-Prajakta G, FYBSc.