An Abundance of Katherines

Author:  John Green

Rating:  0 stars out of 3 possible  ("D/F")
             Not Recommended

Audience:  High School

John Green, author of The Fault In Our Stars, is the latest, greatest writer to reach our teens and relate to them in all their self-indulgent angst.

Now, my thirteen year old has plenty of unsupervised lunch time at the public middle school and she's plenty old enough to check out her own books and basically read whatever she wants.  But that doesn't mean she always should.  And, she's bright enough to make quality choices.  But that doesn't mean she always will.

So when she brought An Abundance of Katherines home from the county library, a quick perusal of the jacket flaps told me instantly this was probably not a book I could endorse in my home.  First of all, it was all about 18 year old boys on a "find ourselves" road trip.

Next, the foul language came jumping off the pages in the first chapter.  To avoid too much censorship, John Green, with a nod to Norman Mailer, uses "fug" and "fugging" and plenty of other foul terms with reckless abandon.  I'm not naive enough to think my daughter doesn't hear all of this at middle school, but I won't give it the stage at home.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, my biggest complaint with this book is not with the language.  My biggest complaint is with the characters.  Colin and Hassan are best friends and smart kids.  Too smart.  They've figured out they're more than bright, but not quite geniuses.  Hence they find themselves in a paralysis of analysis.

What is one to do if one is only a prodigy (good at mental games or memorization), but not a true genius (able to think original thoughts)?  Hassan is thinking about avoiding college.  Colin is obsessing over his latest break-up with the 19th Katherine.  (True to his quirkiness, he only dates girls named Katherine and spends his free-time making anagrams off the top of his head.)

When the two boys decide to ditch responsibility and expectation (too much stress) to go on a road trip, it takes a no-nonsense girl (Lindsey) and a no-nonsense town (Gutshot, TN) to help them find their senses.  (Clearly neither boy can provide much in the way of checks and balances, or even decent advice, to the other.)

This is a troubling account of our teenagers in a number of ways.  First of all, it confirms that "friends" and "friendship" cannot provide the mature guidance adolescents need.  Secondly, it adds to my concern that adolescence is an incredibly myopic time in life where young people are overly insecure, overly self-focused, and overly over-reacting to many conflicting emotions.  Thirdly:  smart, capable, middle-class students need to get over whatever kind of reverse discrimination they think they feel and get on with building character and making a contribution to society.

(Of course it would help if parents could quit pressuring their little overachievers and ratcheting up their stress level by labeling them as "gifted," and "highly capable," while at the same time cheering if little Johnny so much as puts all the pegs in the right holes at 3 years of age.)

I don't really think, by voicing these feelings in his characters, John Green is doing much to guide or encourage teens.  It's not really enough to identify a problem ("our teenagers are stressed out") and then not provide some real solutions (hard work, solid friends, family identity, moral foundations) in a believable way.  Instead, Colin and Hassan (and their readers) are left to believe that finishing their road trip with Lindsey by their side will lead to clear minds and quality decisions.

I should probably relate the cleverness of the math and footnotes in Green's book.  I should probably tell you I chuckled out loud many times.  But then I would also have to analyze Hassan's religion which allows him plenty of double standards and no real hope or guidance.

More and more I'm realizing my teenager does have insecurity and worry.  Our plan to help with that is to engage more and more, whenever possible, with the reality of love, relationship and perspective.  We want to build on a foundation that tells her she is not alone, and that there is a God in the Universe that helps it all make sense, and that things are never as bad as they may appear.  This God of the Universe holds our future and helps our present.

You know what my thirteen year old is doing right now?  Probably reading An Abundance of Katherines in the school library.  And I'm okay with that.  Because she's going to make her own choices, and she's going to know our standards, and then she's going to read this review.  And she might even agree with it.