The twenty-seventh book that I’ve finished reading this year is John Green’s “An Abundance of Katherines”. I picked up this book in the library as its title reminded me of the abundant Katherynes across Teyvat. The story unfolds as Colin Singleton, a prodigy no-longer who is crazy about anagramming, gets dumped by his Katherine XIX and goes along with his hirsute and pudgy friend Hassan on an aimless road trip. They reach Gutshot, a town in Tennessee, and start a new adventure there with Lindsey Lee Wells, the first person they talk to in the town.

One thing that I learned from reading this book is the difference between a “prodigy” and a “genius”; the earlier refers to someone who can process knowledge very quickly, while the latter is someone who can create new inventions. There are many other trivia in the book, such as the shower vortexes that push the shower curtain inwards instead of outwards. However, these should be the icing on the cake; if the story isn’t well developed, readers won’t find these trivia worthy of much attention. Other than a couple of laughs here and there from some ridiculously described events, I did not find much enjoyable while reading this story. One questions why a millionaire on the edge of bankruptcy would allow two strangers to stay at her mansion for free at their first meeting and pay them 500 dollars per week to interview the rest of the town (not even asking them to collate the information and write a report?!). One also questions why the daughter of the said millionaire would date a fboy who called her a dog and gave her dog food for Valentine’s present. It is also too predictable that Colin would get over his fetish for Katherines and start something new with Lindsey (though who knows how long it’s gonna last after C goes for college back in Chicago and L keeps working on her paramedic license at perhaps community college as she refuses to leave town). Some of the rising action are obviously designed to gain reader’s interest, though perhaps in ungainly ways (e.g. H refusing to take his shirt off so L has to take her shirt off to treat C’s wound; H’s girlfriend hooking up with L’s boyfriend in a graveyard and coincidentally spotted by H and C). All in all, I cannot tell what the central message of the story is; there is perhaps a forced moral at the end where C explicitly says “the future cannot be predicted” and he’s feeling “not-unique in the very best possible way”, but what has that to do with hunting hogs, getting stung by hornets and bumping into a graveyard hookup (which in my opinion is already the climax of the story)? Or, engaging in the suicidal act of creating redundant jobs for the town while only 1/4 of the production can be sold? That is a waste of land, labour and capital, and not environmentally friendly either. A better way would be thinking of new business ideas that pump new life into the town, rather than taking an ostrich view of the situation.

None of the characters struck a chord with me either; I can tell that Green wanted to create them multi-dimensionally, but what came out was not quite the case. Colin, the prodigy who drowns himself in his unfortunate fate of being dumped by Katherines, sulking just because he’s not a genius, head on to invent a theorem to predict the trajectory of relationships, seems to be just fussing about what he doesn’t have and behaves rather melodramatically (e.g. puking after Katherine XIX dumped him; waiting for XIX to call him back all the time). Hassan, a half-hearted Muslim who claims that he wouldn’t do anything haram but instantly breaks the rule to kiss a girl he wouldn’t marry and gets angry with his friend for not being happy about that, often too whimsical and enveloping all his laziness with his mediocre attempt of humour. Lindsey, a girl who coins herself as a chameleon who changes her personality around anyone she meets, hoping to find her true self but easily reveals her secret hiding place to Colin, who she’s only met for a few weeks and haven’t had any significant interaction with except taking her shirt off to wrap up his wound. Honestly speaking, I wouldn’t want to be friends with any one of them, and I wonder how they can make the plot interesting if their personalities are so superficial.

Perhaps you could argue that I’m too old for these teenager wishy-washy romance and existential crisis whines, but there are writers who can make meaningful and in-depth examinations of such phenomenon, e.g. Salinger in “The Catcher in the Rye”. Thinking back to my teenage years (spent reading more classics than young adult novels), I definitely had some existential crisis realising that I couldn’t be perfect in everything, which augmented further in university, but it was more through “doing the best I can” than doing nothing meaningful in particular that I gradually came to terms with it. As for the romance side, I learnt that it’s better off being single than staying in a toxic relationship, so why couldn’t Colin cherish his single life a bit more before zapping himself into a new relationship that’s bound to fail at some point or another?

Nonetheless, I would still give “The Fault in Our Stars” a try, partly due to the heavier topic of life and death, as well as some good reviews from friends. Let’s hope to see a more mature writer of John Green in this one.