Posted Jan 26 2012, 7:00 am in Book Hungry, fiction, Patty Blount, What I'm Reading
This month, Book Hungry reviewed John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines. I picked up a copy from my library and I have to admit, the cover turned me off. Here’s why:
MATH!
This is why I’m a writer, people. I loathe math.
But I have to admit, this was a unique story with some truly heartwarming moments. The story focuses on Colin Singleton, a child prodigy who has been dumped a spectacular 19 times, but that’s not so interesting. What’s interesting is that all 19 dumpers (yeah, I know how that sounds. Just go with it. ) were named Katherine. Not Kate. Not Cathy. Not Kathryn.
Katherine.
After Colin is dumped by K19, he has something of an epiphany – apparently, not every prodigy grows up to be a genius. In fact, most grow up to hold perfectly ordinary jobs. “Prodigies learn; geniuses do.” Colin decides he must do something and with his best friend, Hassan, heads south on a road trip he hopes will prove the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability. In other words, Colin must prove love is graphable.
The story opened a bit slowly for my preferences but I was soon captured by Mr. Green’s characters. Hassan, who is NOT a terrorist, as he informs all he meets, is Colin’s best friend, in charge of keeping Colin somewhat normal. In return, Colin helps motivate Hassan to get off his sofa. The pair even have a safe word – ‘dingleberries’ – which either can use when he feels the other has pushed a bit too far.
When our heroes reach the town of Gutshot, they stop for a tour of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s grave, where they meet the lovely Lindsay Lee Wells – NOT a Katherine. Gutshot, as it turns out, intrigues our heroes enough to stick around for a while. Lindsay’s mom, Hollis, offers the boys room and board, as well as a job interviewing townsfolk for posterity. Hollis owns a tampon string factory and the whole darn town works for her. The quirkiness levels are off the chart and that became my favorite thing in this book – that nothing (or no one) – is what they appear on the surface.
The book’s structure was as unique as the story inside – the novel has footnotes, people! And they were just as quirky as the primary content. I won’t give away any spoilers, so if you want to learn whether Colin proved his theory, you have to read it for yourselves.
I give this book 4 out of 5 dingleberries only because every time one of the boys said that word, I giggled. Not 5 because of the math. (Boo!)
Have you read this story? Tell me what you think! Please visit my Book Hungry team members and read their reviews.
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Ack! Math!
But at least it sounds like there aren’t many equations involved, so that’s good. :)
i guess i didn’t think you guys would be math haters. but i LOVED the footnotes in the story. they were one of my favorite things…but then again, i had no problem with the math. i kind of liked the graphs and equations colin came up with.
but then again, im kind an analytical person (even though i am a writer) sorry
I’m teasing; I actually thought the math theory, the graphs, the variables were great fun. In fact, if story had been used in my 9th grade algebra class, I might not have hated math at all!
the footnotes! i forgot about the footnotes. they were wonderful.
speaking of wonderful, your rating system continues to crack me up. i love it.