My coping mechanism while growing up was imagining that I had a physical reel of tape in my head (behind my forehead) that “played” my thoughts. To the extent that she always wears band aid on her middle finger as she’ll sometimes draw blood. Some days she functions, other days she can’t get out of her own head enough to form a sentence.Īlthough I fortunately never had as severe OCD and never had a mental illness that was as debilitating over such a long stretch of time as Aza, there’s still lots to recognise in the way she feels and the way she talks about it, when thinking about my own experiences with invasive thoughts, anxiety and depression.įor instance, Aza has a coping mechanism of pushing her thumbnail into the finger pad of her middle finger when she has unwanted thoughts and starts to doubt if she is real. She goes to therapy and has done so for years. There’s seemingly a lot going on, but at the same time it’s really more about what goes on in Aza’s head.
Secondarily it’s a story about a missing millionaire, rekindling old friendships, dead parents, young love and Star Wars fan fiction. This book is mainly a story about a teenage girl with mental illness.
I find the language beautiful and easy to read, the thoughts mostly interesting and definitely something I can still relate to when thinking back to my own teen experience. But, this being fiction, I don’t really have a problem with that. Yes, they are unrealistic – I’ve never met a teenager (or any person for that matter) who speaks like Green’s characters.
That is, very precocious teenagers who are all amateur existential philosophers. I’ve come to understand that the type of characters this book is populated with are typical for John Green.
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