Redheaded Reviews: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Asa Holmes has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Mostly it's obsessive thinking and she pinches her thumb area causing it to bleed and require a band-aid, but more importantly when it heals she still obsessively cleans it. His obsessive thoughts involve getting C. Diff, a bacteria that get inside your system usually because you stayed at a hospital or took antibiotics, but this doesn't necessarily have to be true. In rare cases, you can just get it and Asa is obsessed with getting it among other things.

Asa's best friend since childhood is Daisy who writes fan fiction about Star Wars characters Rey and Chewbacca being in a love relationship. Daisy comes from a poorer family and she is the talker of the relationship. It's Daisy's idea to go snooping at Davis Picket's house. His dad skipped town with charges pending on him and there's a reward of $100,000 for information leading to his capture. Asa remembers that Davis had put stop motion cameras in the back of the house and the police probably don't know about them. So she and Daisy sneak on the grounds and download the digital files off of the camera and one of them is of a man leaving the grounds that way. They're about to get caught so Daisy smashes their boat and pretends that they came there for help.

Remeeting Davis after all those years ago when they saw each other at Sad Camp for those who had lost a parent, Asa, her father, and Davis, his mother brings back happy memories of the camp where Asa had a crush on Davis. Asa will come over again to hang out and she will ask Davis about the evidence and how he would feel if she and Daisy would turn it in. So Davis gives them $100,000 from his father's many stashes that he has around the house. It's the only way he can be sure she isn't after his money and he won't betray him.

Davis has a younger brother Noah who is getting into trouble at school because he believes that it will bring their dad home. Davis is trying to raise his brother with the help of a paid housekeeper and a lawyer handling the money, but it isn't easy. Davis is fascinated with astronomy and points out things in the sky to Asa. Asa tries to be a girlfriend to Davis but kissing makes her think of all his microbes entering her body and invading it and she can't handle it. So they hold hands instead even though both of them want to kiss each other.

Things will take a turn for the worse in Daisy and Asa's friendship as their true feelings become evident and something Asa didn't know about comes to light. Will their friendship survive this calamity? What about Asa and Davis? Can they continue going the way they are? John Green really captures what it's like to have OCD. Asa is a wonderful character and her friend Daisy is a good compliment to her. Davis is sweet and understanding to a degree, but he wants more from her than she is capable of giving perhaps. Her mom is obsessed with her obsessiveness which is almost funny in a sad way. Asa dreams of going away to college but she realizes that that probably isn't realistic. That she'll probably live with her mom for a long while. That's hard to come to terms with as a teen. This book is amazing to read and explores mental illness and how it affects those around them. I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

But I was beginning to to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 1)

Anybody can look at you. It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 9)

“It’s just weird how this is decided by someone I don’t know and then I have to live by it. Like, I live on someone else’s schedule. And I’ve never even met them.” “Yes, well, in that respect and many others, American high schools do rather resemble prisons.” My eyes widened. “Oh my God, Mom, you’re so right. The metal detectors. The cinder-block walls.” “They’re both overcrowded and underfunded,”Mom said. “And both have bells that ring to tell you when to move.” “And you don’t get to choose when you eat lunch,” I said. “And prisons have power-thirsty corrupt guards, just like schools have teachers.”

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 11-12)

The whole problem with boys is that ninety-nine percent of them are, like okay. If you could dress and hygiene them properly, and make them stand up straight and listen to you and not be dumbasses, they’d be totally acceptable.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 41)

Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 52)

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustainable I am, the more I will respect myself.

-Charlotte Bronte

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

-William James

“Ugh, God, now this guy is saying I write bestiality.” “Wait, what?” “Because in my fic, Chewbacca and Rey were in love. He’s saying it is –and I am quoting—‘criminal’ because it’s interspecies romance. Not sex, even—I keep it rated Ten for the kids out there—just love.” “|But Chewbacca isn’t human,” I said. “It’s not a question of whether Chewie was human, Holmsey, it’s a question of whether he was a person. And he was obviously a person. Like, what even makes you a person? He had a body and a soul and feelings, and he spoke a language, and he was an adult, and if he and Rey were in hot, hairy, communicative love, then let’s just thank God that two consenting sentient adults found each other in a dark and broken galaxy.”

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 66)

“And why are you using the past tense?” “Because all of this happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Holmsy. You always use the past tense when talking Star Wars. Duh.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 67)

I feel like I might be driving the bus of my consciousness.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 86)

One of the challenges with pain—physical of psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 89)

Your now is not forever.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 93)

Star Wars is the American religion.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 96)

The question is not yet settled whether madness is to is not loftiest intelligence.

-Edgar Allan Poe

What I love about science is that as you learn, you don’t really get answers. You just get better question.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 177)

Even the silence/ has a story to tell you.

-Jacqueline Woodson

You know Sejou Sundiata, in a poem, he saidthe most important part of the body “aint the heart or the lungs or the brain. The biggest, most important part of the body is the part that hurts.”

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 224)

Actually, the problem is that I can’t lost my mind. It’s inescapable.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 240)

People talk like there’s a bright line between imagination and memory, but there isn’t, at least not for me. I remember what I’ve imagined and imagine what I remember.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 271)

I missed everybody. To be alive is to be missing.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 281)

You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in the world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person, and why.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 285)

No one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.

-John Green (Turtles All the Way Down p 286)