John Green’s fifth solo novel, Turtles All the Way Down, was published October 10, and it’s a book you need to get your hands on.
The novel is about a girl named Aza who struggles with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), mostly concerning the human microbiome (particularly C. diff). Readers follow Aza and her best friend, Daisy, as they discover a local billionaire, whose son Aza used to know, has gone missing. The two go on adventures trying to solve the case, each falling in love with friends in their lives, and dealing with both of their own problems (Aza’s being her anxiety and Daisy being poor).
Green is known for his previous novels, Looking for Alaska and A Fault in Our Stars, which was adapted into the No. 1 box office movie in 2014.
Green and his brother, Hank, are behind the YouTube channels Vlogbrothers and Crash Course. Their Vlogbrothers channel grew a quick community of fans, deemed “Nerdfighters.” They took this formed-community and created a charitable movement, Project for Awesome, with the motto, “Online Creators Decreasing World Suck.”
So it made sense when Green was included in Time magazine’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2014.
Green continued this influence within Turtles All the Way Down. The young adult novel addresses issues such as death and mental illness. But it’s different than how Green took on them in A Fault in Our Stars.
Aza’s anxiety and OCD are not easily managed. She speaks multiple times about the feeling of a spiral closing in on her. She feels she has no control. Green gave the reader an entrance into her mind. We feel the torment. We see the fear and obsession. There is no light-heartedness as expected from Green’s other books, but that simply just adds to make this a better story.
There is a love story, but it’s not a typical Green-fall-in-love-at-first-sight kind of tale. Aza and the billionaire’s son don’t exactly date. They never put a label on it, and because of Aza’s anxiety the relationship is harder. It’s different, but in a good way. The reader connects with the two and roots for them, even when it’s hard to.
Aza’s anxiety and OCD aren’t simply portrayed through her love interests. There is a strain sometimes between her and Daisy. Daisy writes fan fiction and seems to have intertwined her anger toward her best friend into the stories. The anxiety, the reader finds, affects all parts of Aza’s life. It’s not just in her mind. It’s real.
And Green knows it’s real too.
“This is my first attempt to write directly about the kind of mental illness that has affected my life since childhood, so while the story is fictional, it is quite personal,” Green said.
Green “had this obsessive thinking problem” since childhood, as he said. In the United States, about one in forty adults and one in one hundred children have OCD, according to beyondocd.org. The neurobiological disease is one of the top twenty causes of illness-related disabilities. It is characterized by persistent, uncontrollable thoughts or impulses that are unwanted and disturbing (which Aza portrays in Turtles All the Way Down).
Anxiety disorders, on the other hand, can force people to avoid high-intensity situations. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), this disorder affects 40 million adults in the United States 18 years of age or older.
But I, who doesn’t have an anxiety disorder or OCD, can still relate. Green created characters that are realistic, and their troubles are comprehensible. There wasn’t a barrier of understanding because Green made the feelings and difficulties Aza went through genuine. The story doesn’t feel made up.
This is a very personable book. Any lover of young adult novels will enjoy this book. It’s definitely a must read.