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Turtles all the way down summary5/22/2023 Its narrator may not actually be aware that she’s the imaginary creation of a man named John Green, but she knows all too well how a story has the power to hijack your life. Turtles is a confectionary romantic comedy and a tear-jerker and a detective story and a high school friendship drama and a problem novel (the term used for young adult fiction illuminating a social issue like drug abuse or teen pregnancy). His novels, including his 2012 best-seller, The Fault in Our Stars, are deceptively light-handed, remarkably seamless blends of themes and tones that would ordinarily clash with each other. I can’t be more specific without reaping the whirlwind of spoilerphobia, but I’d point out that Green’s work is not as unsophisticated and earnest as it’s often taken to be. Turtles All the Way Down turns out not to be that sort of clever, tricky book-not exactly, and not until very late in the game. The opening sentence of John Green’s new book begins, “At the time I first realized I might be fictional,” a suggestion that the reader has picked up some kind of YA Borges-style metafiction, a work that calls attention to its own made-up status.
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