Review: An Abundance of Katherines

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So this is the classic story of two people driving through a small-town and accidentally staying longer than they intended to. I've heard it before, not never with characters this young. It may not be super-realistic, but it was still pretty sweet and I'd like to think these kinds of things happen to people.

The main character, Colin, is pretty annoying. He's, you know, self-absorbed, loves a bit too hard, and obsessed with being special and smart. The thing that made me like him though, was that the narrative doesn't treat him like this amazing person who is too good for everyone around him. The things that are annoying about him are treated as FLAWS. Part of his character and personality, sure, but still flaws. That was so refreshing, I feel the narrative far too often lets characters get away with shit like this without ever acknowledging them as bad.

I also liked that we really see where Colin gets this from, how he turned out like this. His parents seem very nice and supportive, but of course telling a kid over and over that they are special and amazing and so much more than everyone else around them isn't gonna help them in the long run. While this wasn't really condemned neither by Colin or the narrative, it was a nice touch to explain him.

The constant footnotes bothered me at the start as well, but I realized that this fit with Colin's character as well. All this knowledge that he'll never get to share with anyone, that is really just footnotes in the bigger picture. Yeah, having to look down on every other page was a bit distracting, but it fit rather well with the main character (and that's obviously the point: I've never seen this in any other book by John Green).

There were no scenes or plots that I found over-whelmingly awesome, it was just the book over-all that I liked. Though the ending, in particular, struck a chord with me.

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