Five stars.
John Green channels teenage angst like no one, and he parlays them, unaccountably, into riveting novels of pathos and the teen journey. He broke my heart with The Fault in Our Stars, and he did it agai with Turtles. The title of course comes from the story that some old woman was arguing in favor of the Flat Earth theory with a modern scientist who was of course discussing that the Earth is a sphere. The woman then patiently explains, when the scientist asks, that the Flat Earth is, of course, sitting on the back of an enormous turtle. Ah ha! thinks the scientist, who asks, “Well, what is the turtle sitting on, then?” And the immortal response: “Well, it’s turtles ALL THE WAY DOWN.” Duh.
Green parlays that saying into the mental health cycle of the protagonist, whose Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) pervades the narrative and prevents our heroine from achieving so many great things. Throw in a murder mystery, and you THERE, you’ve lost another full day of your vacation marinating in someone’s fever dreams.
CMIO’s take? I always feel rewarded, when I come out the other side of a novel, feeling like I just lived someone else’s life for a day or so, my adrenal glands all squeezed out, my emotions having been through the wringer, and somehow, my own head a bit clearer for it, and my own problems just a little bit less pressing.
