Why You Must Read Turtles All the Way Down

My daughter claims that John Green’s books are so good because “he usually has a deep theme he alludes to, but doesn’t hit you over the head with it, and it’s not too cheesy.” I’m in the middle of editing one of my YA novels, and I eagerly read (listened to) Green’s latest release, Turtles All the Way Down, to figure out what makes his work resonate with so many people.

Premise

Turtles All the Way Down is a young adult contemporary story of Aza Holmes, a 16 year old girl trying to solve a mystery while struggling to manage her mental illness. Millionaire Russell Pickett, the father of her childhood friend Davis, has disappeared, and Aza and her best friend Daisy want to find him. However, unlike the detectives in movies and TV who have mental illnesses, Aza’s OCD does not help her solve the mystery. In fact, it very much gets in her way.

What I liked

Like my daughter said, Green includes not just one, but several themes and motifs in his story to deepen the meaning. Here are a few:

• Spirals, as in thought spirals, as in the uncontrollable thoughts that hijack Aza’s consciousness and interrupt her daily life. The title of the novel, Turtles all the Way Down, alludes to the futility of trying to find an end to those thought spirals.
• The image of looking up through bare tree branches. This imagery takes on special importance late in the novel when a phone screen is shattered, like bare tree branches dividing the sky.
• The sky, the stars, the planets and how small we are compared to the vastness of the universe.
• The language of pain, and how difficult it is to find words to describe psychic pain

Green’s novels also resonate because he tackles tough issues, like pain, loss, and suffering. Turtles addresses the challenges of mental illness and the loss of important people in our lives. It also touches on how hard it is to watch someone you love suffer.

Usually, Green’s novels don’t end with a tidy, happy conclusion. Often, the characters don’t get what they are looking for, but they do learn something important about the world or themselves. Turtles is no exception.

I love Aza and Davis, two of the main characters in Turtles All the Way Down. Green skillfully brings the reader inside Aza’s head to experience her struggle. She’s a kind girl who trys so hard to cope. Davis is a privileged son of a millionaire, but he’s very thoughtful, posting poems and other musings on life on his secret blog. He’s also very patient with Aza, and I adored him for that.

What I didn’t like

I don’t like a lot of Green’s characters. They are often self-absorbed and difficult.  In Turtles All the Way Down, for most of the book I didn’t like Aza’s best friend Daisy. She’s shallow and flippant and surreptitiously includes Aza in the fan fic she writes, and not in a good way.

When I complain about Green’s characters to other readers, many comment, “Oh, they remind me of the people I went to school with.” And by the end of Turtles, I had a revelation. Maybe I don’t like some of Green’s characters because they are too flawed, too real. I want them to be better, but they aren’t, because they are like actual people. My friends were self-absorbed at times too, (weren’t we all as teenagers?), and so I’ve come to appreciate characters like Daisy a little better. I still don’t like her.

A Note on Mental Illness

John Green suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Turtles All the Way Down attempts to describe his psychic pain. He explains what it’s like to live with OCD in this Vlogbrothers video, (see below) saying that society tends to think of OCD as excessive hand washing and neatness because that’s visible. But there is actually a lot more going on in the mind of a person with OCD, often things that are hard to describe. Green also points out that society tends to stigmatize as well as romanticize mental illness, such as detectives, like the TV character Monk, who are good at solving cases because of their mental illness. For Green, there is nothing romantic about his illness; in fact, it makes it hard for him to think, much less solve problems.

According to the Mayo Clinic, OCD is characterized by obsessions and/or compulsions. Obsessions are repeated, persisted, unwanted thoughts and urges that intrude on a person’s everyday life and cause distress. Some examples include fear of contamination or dirt, needing things orderly, and aggressive thoughts. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors patients feel driven to do to decrease their anxiety. They are not realistically related to the problem they attempt to address and can include things like hand washing, checking, counting, and strict routines/ rituals.

In short, there is a huge difference between perfectionism and OCD, mainly that people with OCD experience worry out of proportion to real problems. I used to think I worried a lot, and I would joke that I had “OCD” tendencies. I will never joke about that again.

Recommendation

Turtles All the Way Down is a great novel for those who love contemporary YA. It’s also good if you know someone with mental illness and want to learn more about what it’s like to live with it. warning: I saw several reviews on Goodreads that said it was hard for people with mental illness to read because it’s too accurate.

Have you read Turtles All the Way Down?  What did you think?  Can you recommend other books about mental illness?

Happy reading!

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