It's the same spiel every time I read a John Green book. I get onto this blog, tell you how amazing John Green and his books are, and then I tell you how great the last book of his I read was. Today, it's a little different; I'll be raving not only about John and his book, but about John's co-author David Levithan, as well.
For John, I've nearly run out of words to praise him with. If you want to learn about him, click here and here and here and here and here and even here or here. I'll let previous me and a few other sources do the talking about John Green, which lets me get onto David Levithan.
I don't know too much about Levithan, besides the fact that he's a popular writer among the teen folk. He's written at a prolific pace since 2003, producing twenty novels by my count in twelve years. Many of his books involve gay characters, and he's been credited for changing the stereotype of gay novels from focusing relentlessly on the trials of homosexual characters to viewing them as regular kids with who just so happen to be gay. I'll for sure try to pick up another of his books in the future, as if all of the novels he produces are similar to Will Grayson Will Grayson, then I'll have my reading cut out for me for months to come.
Will Grayson Will Grayson is interesting in that almost all aspects of physical plot are cut out. At it's heart, it's about people's relationships with one another. There is no grand road trip or search for someone à la Paper Towns, or struggle against disease as in The Fault In Our Stars, just people struggling to understand each other with the fat cut off. Sure, that fat is often used to convey a message more effectively or to make a book more entertaining, but for whatever reason I didn't feel it was needed in Will Grayson Will Grayson. There was little to go on but the characters, and this made the characters so much more interesting to the reader.
The two primary characters in the book are, wait for it, Will Grayson and Will Grayson. The first of those is a high school student who's two main rules in life are don't care too much and shut up. Most definitely a result of this, he has approximately two friends. The first is the possibly-gay Jane, for whom Will has... mixed feelings. The second is the extremely gay in both senses of the word Tiny, who provides the only real plot of the story by putting on a musical all about his life.
Will Grayson the second, on the other hand, is a depressed, angry, and scornful gay person. When it comes to friends, he has none who would stand by his side in the real world. He does, however, have Isaac. Isaac is a boy Will met online, and the only ray of light in Will's otherwise dark and gloomy life.
Of course, near the middle of the book, the two Will Grayson's meet, and they're lives start to change.
Did I say before that the lack of conventional plot allows for more focused exploration of the characters, which makes them much more interesting? I did? Well, I'm saying it again anyways. It cannot be stressed enough; Green and Levithan nailed their characters.
There's not a character in this book who doesn't have multiple sides of their personality revealed. Both Will's, of course, have opposite, more sensitive sides. Tiny is explored very deeply, just as much as the Will Graysons are. In exploring these characters, the reader starts to relate to them.
So much so in fact that I feel the entirety of myself is hidden in the characters. I'm a good part Tiny, with a fair helping of Will Grayson the first thrown in there. I'm a dash of Jane, and a sprinkle of the other Will Grayson.
With so many characters being so relatable, I could almost feel that I was learning the lessons they learned along with them. Through fiction, I thought more deeply about my own life, which I honestly think should be the objective of fictional writing. Rarely do I come across a book like this. 9/10 stars, easily.
The last thing I want to talk about before I go is the contrast between John Green on his own and David Levithan with John Green. I've read no other works by Levithan, but I did get a bit of a feel for him because of how he affected Green.
For one, the book gained a larger sense of realism then any of the other John Green books I've read. This is not only in the lack of an extraordinary event to set the ball rolling, but also in the characters. I've heard people say that John's characters speak too eloquently for their age, don't act quite how they should. A large amount of them, it's said, seem to be amateur philosophers. In Will Grayson Will Grayson there was still a bit of that, but it was noticeably toned down. You should note that I'm usually all for slightly unbelievable elements if it strengthens the story, but I did feel that the down-to-earth nature of Will Grayson Will Grayson was the best thing for it.
Also, the story was considerably darker then other Green novels. Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and An Abundance of Katherines are all generally cheery novels. Sure there are problems, sure the characters are often upset, but overall the story is one grand adventure. Even in The Fault in our Stars, it's a love story more then anything. They keep their chins up.
Not always so in Will Grayson Will Grayson. One of them, as I said, is depressed and angry. All of the characters are imperfect, while some are downright treacherous. It doesn't all work out in the end.
This, however, just leads to a more engaging plot which you can lose yourself in. This is a book that kept me up at night. This is a book that I forced myself to stop reading at times just so that I could savour it. This is a book that I recommend to everyone.
Let's see what John Green comes up with next.
Thanks for reading,
-Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment