When John Green releases a new novel, this time, titled “Turtles All the Way Down,” I feel inclined to pay attention.
Green is an anomaly of a writer in 2017: he’s monetarily successful. In the age of Amazon and e-books, it has become rare for writers to be just that: writers.
Plenty of New York Times bestselling authors have no choice but to work part-time, occasionally even full-time, in order to have enough money to sustain their lives. Writing a well-received novel does not equal wealth.
In comes Green with a net worth estimated to be anywhere from $5 to 17 million with an equal amount of passionate followers.
Green’s novels have also faced their fair share of criticism. The complaints range from general corniness to unlikely and unrealistic events. More troubling issues, such as harmful tropes being employed in young adult literature, combined with a lack of diversity, also show their face.
I imagine Green planned on battling these criticisms with his latest October 2017 release, “Turtles All the Way Down.” This novel is about Ava Holmes, a high school girl struggling with an anxiety disorder.
At the beginning of the novel, Davis, a childhood best friend’s billionaire father, has gone missing. There is a $100,000 reward for anyone who can find him. Ava and her sidekick best friend Daisy reconnect with Davis in pursuing this reward. Along the way, there’s romance, the testing of relationships, lives in danger—all that good stuff.
It’s about as Green as a novel can get, despite seeming to try his hardest not to be as Green as can be. “Turtles All the Way Down” attempts to employ diversity in the novel by briefly describing minor characters in a way that ensures the reader of ethnicity or body type. Unfortunately, he doesn’t go much further than that. Diversity: check!
There’s the obligatory best friend with a 2017 remodeling of various shallow quotes about oppression and feminism combined with humor. I mean, it’s what the kids are talking about. Feminism and social activism: check!
A two-paragraph-long conversation about classism. Awareness of privilege: check!
None of these things are bad things to find in a novel. The problem is the shallow and clumsy approach. There is no passion or care for the romance in the novel.
Ava, our protagonist, does not, in fact, end up with the super rich, pretty cute, and kind of poetically tortured Davis. She has to take care of herself and her mental health first.
So if romance isn’t the point of this novel, the writing didn’t make it feel that way. *That* is a bad thing. Important conversations regarding mental health, classism, and privilege are written in a stereotypical and shallow fashion—almost as if included as an obligatory afterthought. They are kept vague, yet Green seems to have respect for the intelligence of both his characters and readers in romantic scenes.
When it comes to romance, Green loves writing teenagers who talk in such lofty philosophical ways that it rests between ridiculous and unrealistic. Flirting teens are able to debate the singularity or plurality of the pronoun “I” and have college-level metaphorical biology conversations. This depth is missing from “Turtles All the Way Down.” If Green wanted to write a romance novel, he should’ve done exactly that rather than denying it for what it is by thinly veiling it with other themes thoroughly left unexplored.
I hope readers walk away from this novel believing that they have begun to learn something new, while at the same time, understanding that there is still much left to be learned. I hope Green feels the same way. It’s always a positive thing when young readers can have a learning experience, even a minor one.
It’s significant that Green has taken steps in the right direction for his young readers. Although it may not seem like it, I’m rooting for him to succeed.