Imagine a book where the narrator, while being a character in the book, isn't the main character, and said narrator is practically obsessed with the main character of our story. Welcome to Paper Towns by John Green, where Quentin Jacobsen (the narrator) is obsessed not with this girl, but with the idea of this girl in his head. That girl, you may ask (but probably shouldn't) is his next door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, who he was certainly close with in early childhood, but he hasn't talked to her much since 4th grade. He still has this huge crush on her; he thinks of her as some larger than life figure, and he will always refer to her by her full name as a way to state his idea of her greatness. There are so many things that make me just hate Quentin as a character, one being that his crush on Margo doesn't come off as cute, it comes off as creepy, obsessive, and weird. Not to mention that at that it is highly unlikely they will end up together in a realistic situation by the end of the book, which I was dying for while reading the story.
Well, you say to yourself for some reason I don't understand, the narrator is creepy and boring, but at least main character is an interesting person to some degree, right? In some ways, yes; however, Margo is an unrealistic character which to some extent justifies Quentin's awful obsession. One of the best qualities of Holden Caulfield, the main character in "The Catcher and the Rye," who is often compared to Margo, is that while Holden has a hunger for something more and meaningful in life, he falls victim to his own laziness and doesn't even attempt to find it. Margo in some ways is essentially Holden if he went through with his ideas; however, Holden not going through with his ideas is what made him such an interesting, relatable, and most of all realistic character, while Margo is only slightly interesting. However, near the middle section of the book where Quentin and his friends were searching for Margo, I did feel worried to some extent during the search, which is good on John Green's part for making some of the book interesting. Overall, I rate this book a 1.5/5 and I dread looking it over again to complete the rest of my summer assignment.
Having read Paper Towns, I couldn't agree more with your dislike of Quentin. It's books like these that get such good ratings and are considered the best of the best that seem to have glaring flaws to me. For example, I can't stand To Kill a Mockingbird. About half the book is pure exposition. There is no plot, unless you want to call the Tom Robinson case the plot, despite it being about 1/4 of the book, and with the rest of us being very detached from it. There is no setup, there is no proper conclusion, and there is nothing of value - the entire book is just a bunch of random stories usually contained within one chapter and are usually never mentioned again. The only continuity the book has to offer is the existence of the same characters. However, it's supposedly a masterpiece of American literature.
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