John green paper cities. Paper cities Paper cities read more

Quentin (Q) Jacobsen has been in love with his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman since childhood. Once upon a time, the children were friends, but as they grew older, their characters and interests began to change. Margot and Q were too different, their paths diverged. The main character is still in love, but does not dare to resume communication.

The prom is approaching, which Q has no intention of going to. A few weeks before this event, the young man’s life changed dramatically. One day Margot climbs into his room through the window. The girl asks for help to take revenge on her enemies. Q readily agrees. The next day it becomes known that Margot has disappeared. Neither friends nor parents know what caused her disappearance. Only Quentin finds some messages left by his friend and goes to look for her.

Most of the book is devoted to the search for the main character. For many readers, the last chapter turned out to be a mystery. Only one thing remains clear - Q and Margot are too different to link their destinies.

Characteristics

Q Jacobsen

The author notes that the main characters once had some similarities, which allowed them to be friends. Gradually, Q turned into a boring young man, busy exclusively with his studies. To emphasize the difference between the characters, the author makes Q exaggeratedly positive. A shy teenager lives an uninteresting, gray life, monitors his progress at school, and refuses to participate in public events. His only entertainment was computer games.

Quentin never stopped loving Margot. In his fantasies, he sees himself next to this girl. At the same time, the main character does not insist on making his dreams come true. His fantasies are more like a feature film, where the story ends with the union of lovers. Further life remains somewhere behind the scenes.

Seeing no future with Margot, Q tries to imagine his life without her. He will certainly receive a decent education at a prestigious college and become a lawyer. Quentin will marry a decent girl and live like hundreds of other middle-class Americans. The adventure that Margo persuades him to take becomes a hope that life can still flow in a different direction. However, after going through a long search, Q realizes that the girl he loved was completely different from what he imagined her to be. Quentin ascribed qualities to Margot that she did not have, ignoring what she actually had. He loved the image, not the real person.

Despite some disappointments, Q's little adventure is not a waste of time. The girl he loved made him see life outside the usual world and understand that not everything can be planned. Improvisations make our lives brighter and richer.

The main character appears to others as a bright, attractive and the most popular girl in her school. She loves to break rules because she believes that no rules really exist. People invented them to somehow organize their everyday life. Rules are needed only to justify your routine. Their observance is proof that a person lives “like all normal people.”

Even in her childhood, Margot thought a lot about life. The reality around her seems like paper. Parents, acquaintances, relatives and friends seem to be running in circles. Life is too fleeting to waste it on boredom. But no one wants to stop and think.

The main character is not just an individualist. She's a real egocentric. She sees everyone around her as stereotyped, as if they came off an assembly line. They all want the same thing. Men dream of their own home, car, exemplary family and a dizzying career. Young girls want to get married successfully in order to shift the concern for financial well-being onto the shoulders of their husbands. Margot considers herself different from everyone else. She is special and does not intend to devote her life to routine. The girl takes radical steps to rid herself of a gray future.

main idea

The author tries to cast doubt on the generally accepted rules of “real” life. Do you really need to adjust your life to general concepts of happiness? There are probably some alternatives. To find your path, you need to follow your heart.

Analysis of the work

The novel "Paper Towns", a brief summary of which tells about the transformation of the inner world of the characters, is called by many readers a book for teenagers. However, this is not entirely true.

Readership
The main characters of the novel are American teenagers. But we should not forget that exactly the same people with similar thoughts can live in other countries. Plus, they don't have to be teenagers. Every thirty-year-old man and every forty-year-old woman was once an eighteen-year-old boy and girl.

They were probably also dissatisfied with the world and tried to build their lives so that it would not be like the life of their parents. As they get older, young people begin to understand that not everything is as simple as they once thought. Probably, the parents also dreamed of more, but could not achieve it.

Q and Margot are equally dissatisfied with reality, with the city in which they live. But each of them struggles with their discontent in their own way. Q tries to be a "good boy". Realizing the impossibility of building his happiness with Margot, he imposes dreams on himself: studying at a prestigious college, a stable, although not very interesting job, a home. Quentin ignores the inner emptiness and dissatisfaction he experiences as he replays the series of his future life in his mind.

Margot does not want to put up with the inevitable routine. She must get rid of her by any means necessary. The girl constantly tries to stand out from the crowd, behaves extravagantly, and at times even indecently. But this is not enough for her to be different from others. Margot leaves home to find herself, to once again become the center of everyone's attention and distinguish herself from her peers. This is how the path of many famous people began.

Not all readers know that the title of the novel is a term. Paper cities are non-existent settlements marked on a map. In the novel, this term received new meanings. On the one hand, paper cities are settlements similar to those in which the main characters live. In this way, the author tries to emphasize the artificiality and unnaturalness of the life of ordinary people, mired in routine. People heat paper houses with their own future, says the author. The purpose of this metaphor is to show that most of us are willing to burn our dreams just to keep ourselves warm in the present. Paper cities also symbolize the ethereal illusions that the main characters of the novel are prone to. One spark of common sense is enough for the paper to burst into flames, and all that remains of a bright, alluring dream is a handful of ashes.

5 (100%) 3 votes

Very briefly A high school student in love with his neighbor who ran away from home is looking for a girl following the tracks she left behind. Having found her, the guy finds out that the neighbor did not want her to be found.

The first two parts of the novel are narrated from the perspective of high school student Quentin Jacobsen. The last part is written in third person.

Prologue

Quentin Jacobsen's parents moved to Orlando, Florida when the boy was two years old. They became friends with neighbors, and Quentin sometimes played with their daughter Margot. When the children were nine years old, they found the body of a man on the playground - he was sitting under a huge oak tree in a pool of his own blood.

Quentin's parents, psychotherapists, called the rescue service, but their son was forbidden to look at the cars. At night, Margot knocked on Quentin's window. She investigated and learned that the dead man's name was Robert Joyner. He was a thirty-six-year-old lawyer who killed himself because his wife left him.

Margot was very excited. She said that Joyner “had lost all the strings in his soul,” which is why he killed himself. This childhood memory ends for Quentin when Margot asks him to close the window, and then they look at each other through the glass for a long time. The neighbor became a mystery girl for him.

Part one. Threads

Time has passed. Quentin was finishing his senior year. He had not communicated with Margot Roth Spiegelman for a long time - the girl had her own company, into which losers and nerds were not accepted.

Quentin had two best friends. Everyone called Ben Starling "Bloody Ben." Due to a kidney infection, he had blood in his urine, but Becca Errington, Margot's best friend, spread gossip around the school that Ben constantly masturbates, which is why he urinates blood. Now girls were shying away from Ben, and he couldn’t find a date for the prom he dreamed of going to.

Quentin's second friend, a tall black guy named Radar, a computer-obsessed creator of the online encyclopedia Multipedia, was embarrassed by his parents, owners of the world's largest collection of black Santa Clauses. The whole house was filled with black Santa figures, and Radar could not bring his girlfriend there.

Quentin's last girlfriend left him for a baseball player, and he had no one to go to prom with, and no one wanted him to go to this event. He was a calm and smart guy who was doing well in school and was preparing to go to college. He considered Margot Roth Spiegelman perfection and admired her from afar. Quentin had no real chance - Margot was dating Jace Worthington, the coolest guy in school.

Margot was a legendary person. She was not afraid of anything and ran away from home many times. Each time, her parents searched for her with the police throughout the country.

One night Margot came to Quentin. Jace cheated on her with Becca, and the girl decided to take revenge on them, but her parents took the car key from her. She wanted Quentin to help her, and he agreed.

Today, my dear, we will make up for a lot of harm done by others, and we will do a little harm to those others ourselves. The first will be last, the last will be first, and the meek will inherit a little land.

Having purchased everything they needed, they set out to implement Margot’s eleven-point plan.

The first thing Margot did was find Jace's car, put a lock on the steering wheel, and took the key to it with her. They then went to Becca's and told her father over the phone that his daughter was currently having sex with Jace in the basement of their house. When a half-naked Jace jumped out of the basement window, Quentin managed to take a photo of him. Sneaking into the basement, they stole Jace's clothes, left a raw fish carcass in the closet, and Margo painted the letter "M" on the wall.

After placing a bouquet of tulips on the porch of her friend, whom she had unfairly offended, Margot went to Jace and threw the second fish through his bedroom window. The third fish went to Lacey Pemberton, who did not warn her friend about the betrayal - Margot put it under the seat of her ex-girlfriend's car.

The ninth point was a break in the business center, where a familiar security guard Margot let them through. They looked at the city from a height of the 25th floor. Quentin liked the city, but Margot considered it fake, as if cut out of paper.

Paper people live in paper houses and heat them with their own future.

Margot said that betrayal cut off the last thread in her soul that connected her with this paper life. At that moment, Quentin believed that a romance would begin between them.

According to Margot's plan, the victim for the tenth point was to be chosen by Quentin. She forced the indecisive guy to take revenge on the stupid big guy Chuck, who tormented and humiliated Quentin. Sneaking into the sleeping Chuck's bedroom, they shaved off one of his eyebrows using depilatory cream. The victim woke up and chased after his accomplices, but they had previously smeared the door handles with Vaseline, making them impossible to turn.

The eleventh point was the penetration into the Sea World water park. At first Quentin resisted - he had already done a lot for Margot that night. But the girl said that she could do everything alone. She chose Quentin to shake him, to pull him out of the paper world.

On the way to the water park, Quentin remembered Margot's old words about a man who died in the park. Then she also talked about broken threads. Laughing, Margot said she didn't want to be found in the park on a Saturday morning.

Making their way to Sea World, the guys got wet in a moat with stinking water, then Margot had to pay the guard who caught them, after which they wandered around the night water park for a long time and danced to the music pouring from the loudspeakers.

Part two. Grass

Due to lack of sleep, Quentin spent the entire next day as if in a dream, and by evening rumors spread around the school that Margot Roth Spiegelman had disappeared. The next day, the guys from her company began to press the defenseless nerds. It turned out that Margot forbade them to do this.

Quentin threatened Jace that he would post a photo of him half naked on the Internet. The repressions stopped.

Margot still did not return. One day, her parents came to Quentin's house, accompanied by a black detective. They wanted to know if Quentin knew anything about the girl's whereabouts. This was her fifth escape. The Spiegelmans decided to abandon their daughter and change the locks on the door.

Left alone with the detective, Quentinn told him about their nightly adventure. The detective believed that the Spiegelmans were not capable of raising children, and Margot was a freedom-loving person.

Such children are like helium-filled balloons tied by a string. And this thread is constantly stretched. And then something happens that it breaks and they can fly away.

Since Margot is already an adult, they will not look for her. But after each escape, she left a “trail of bread crumbs” - a series of mysterious hints. She hoped that her parents would stop thinking only about themselves and try to find her using these tracks.

A little later, Quentin looked out the window and saw, on the back of the closed blinds in Margot’s room, a poster of a folk singer who had not been there before. Quentin decided that this was the first trace left by Margot, and was determined to find her. He believed that the girl had chosen him again and hoped for a big prize.

After waiting for the Spiegelmans to leave, Quentin, Ben and Radar entered Margot's room. On one of the vinyl records, which Margot had a lot of, they found an image of the singer from the poster. The title of the disc - "Walt Whitman's Niece" - was circled. Soon, friends found a collection of poet Walt Whitman, where Margot underlined several lines in the poem “Song of Myself.”

On Monday before classes, an upset Lacy Pemberton approached Quentin and said that Margo had nothing to take revenge on her for - she did not know about Jace's betrayal. Because of all this, she lost her best friend, broke up with the guy who knew about Jace's affair, and now she has no one to go to prom with. Lacy assumed that Margot had gone to New York and would be back soon, since she had left her things in her school locker. Ben took advantage of the moment and invited Lacey to go to prom together, and the girl agreed.

Ben suggested that the lines of the poem underlined by Margot, “Get the bolts off the doors!/And the very doors away from the jambs” are a direct guide to action. First, the friends took the door to Margot's room off its hinges, but found nothing. A few days later, Quentin removed the door to his room from its hinges and found a piece of newspaper with an address written in Margot's hand. Judging by Multipedia, this was the address of a shopping center.

The next day, having skipped classes, the friends went there and discovered that the shopping center was just a dilapidated barn with boarded up windows. Quentin remembered the underlined lines in Whitman's poem that talked about death, and decided that Margot had chosen this abandoned place to die.

Inside the building, friends found new “breadcrumbs” - an inscription on the wall “you are going to paper town and will never return” and a rectangular mark with holes from buttons. Going to Multipedia, Quentin found out that paper cities are unfinished settlements, ghost towns that exist only on maps.

Underpopulation! You'll go there and never come back.

Having become even more convinced that Margot had decided to kill herself and wanted him to find her body, Quentin decided to travel around all the undersettlements in the area and found the addresses of five paper cities.

From a literature teacher, Quentin learned that the poem “Song of Myself” is not about death, but “about interconnection - that we all have common roots, like grass.” The guy tried to read the poem, but couldn’t - it turned out to be too complicated.

Quentin drove around all five sub-settlements, found nothing, returned to the abandoned shopping center and discovered the place where Margo spent several nights. Quentin decided to stay here for the night because his parents thought he was at his graduation. He realized that none of them knew the real Margot, who was hiding behind the “cover” of the holiday girl. Having finally mastered the poem, Quentin realized that before looking for Margot, he must understand what kind of person she is - “there is a Margot for each of us, and each is more a mirror than a window.”

On a shelf in a shopping center abandoned in 1986, Quentin found the 1988 guidebook “On the Roads of America.” The corners of some pages were curled.

That night, a drunk and happy Ben called Quentin and asked him to pick him up from Becky's party, which he attended after graduation.

The next day, Quentin told his friends about his discovery, and they went to the mall, taking Lacey, who finally became Ben's girlfriend. There they came across two guys. Quentin recognized one as a security guard from downtown. The guys were keen on exploring abandoned buildings and knew Margot well. Having made her way into such a building, Margot did not photograph anything, but simply sat and wrote something in a black notebook. For Quentin, this was a new, unfamiliar Margot.

The next day, Radar's parents left and his friends had a party. They agreed not to wear anything other than shoes and a gown to graduation. The friends sat for a long time and told each other “window stories and mirror stories.”

Quentin read more and more into Whitman's poem - it helped him understand not only Margot, but also himself. And then he guessed: the rectangle with holes from buttons on the wall of the shopping center is a trace from a map hanging there with pins stuck into it.

The friends went to the shopping center and found a stack of maps in the souvenir department, one of which was published in 1872. The map matched the mark on the wall, but was torn where the pins had been stuck, and the guys again found themselves at a dead end. It began to seem to Quentin that they had “reached the very end of the tangle, but found nothing.”

Quentin successfully passed the exams, and his parents gave him a car - a Ford minivan. He was sure that Margot had left forever and had no plans to appear at the graduation ceremony.

You can only feel pure high if you give up something important ‹…›. You are pulling yourself out by the roots. But you can only do this when you have these roots.

Before the graduation ceremony, Quentin found an article on Multipedia about the underpopulation of Eeglo, where a comment was left stating that “the population of Eeglo will be one person until noon on May 29.” From the way he capitalized words in the middle of a sentence, Quentin knew that Margot had made the comment.

Part three. Vessel

Friends assigned roles. Lacey managed their meager property, and Radar calculated how fast they would need to travel to get from Florida to New York State by noon on May 29th. Everyone drove the car one by one. They had to stop and in six minutes manage to refuel the car and buy food and some clothes, because Ben and Radar had nothing on except robes.

They spent almost a day in the minivan, and during this time the car became their home. On the way, Quentin almost ran over two cows crossing the road. Ben, who was sitting next to him, saved the situation - he turned the steering wheel and the minivan did not roll over. Soon the friends were on their way, and Lacey called Ben a hero. Quentin secretly dreamed that Margot would be happy that she was found, throw herself on his neck and burst into tears.

Finally, the company arrived in Eeglo, which turned out to be an abandoned building similar to a barn. There, behind a screen made of two pieces of plexiglass, Margot Roth Spiegelman sat calmly and wrote something in her black notebook. Having finished writing, she looked at her friends with empty eyes, greeted politely and asked: “Why did you come here?”

Margot immediately quarreled with Lacey and Ben. The guys left, intending to go home in the morning. Quentin stayed - he had too many questions. It turned out that Margot had really left forever and did not want to be found at all.

She said that at the age of ten she began writing a novel about herself “with an emphasis on magic” in a black notebook. The heroine of the novel was in love with a boy named Quentin, had rich, loving parents and a talking dog, and was investigating the murder of Robert Joyner. Then, on top of what she had written, Margot began to draw up detailed plans for her escapes and other events.

In high school, Margo became interested in exploring abandoned buildings and decided to escape forever. She included Quentin in her latest plan because she liked him as a child and hoped that this adventure would liberate him. Then Margot found out about Jason's betrayal and decided to leave immediately, without waiting to receive her diploma.

Early in the morning, getting ready to leave, Margot noticed that she missed Quentin and decided to “bequeath” to him her passion for old buildings. The clues were supposed to lead him to an abandoned shopping center. She left the rest of the “breadcrumbs” by accident, in a hurry without having time to properly cover her tracks. She didn't think Quentin would be able to find her, so she went straight to Eeglo.

That night in the business center, Margo considered herself a piece of paper, not those around her. She created the image of a paper girl who everyone liked, but could not believe in him. Margot hoped that in the paper city of Eeglo she would become herself.

I know what's deeper there. Internal cracks. Splits in the inner world, where one thing does not agree with the other. ‹…› Like holes in the hull of a ship. ‹…› And sooner or later you go to the bottom because of them.

Quentin invited Margot to live with them for the summer and then go to university, but she refused, fearing that she would be sucked into “the right life - college, work, husband and kids and other nonsense.” Quentin did not agree with her: he believed in the future, for him everything listed is a meaningful life. Margot didn’t worry about what would happen next - “then consists of many now.”

After talking with Quentin, Margo called her parents and said that she was alive, but would not return back. The Spiegelmans were not upset. They believed that their daughter should please them, and when Margot rebelled, they threw her out of their life.

Then they lay in the grass until they fell asleep. Waking up, they dug a deep hole in which Margo decided to “bury” a black notebook with a story about Robert Joyner. Quentin said they only recognized each other when they started looking into each other's eyes.

Before that, we saw only fictional images of each other ‹…›. And when a crack appears, light gets in. And the light also comes out.

Then they kissed, and Margot invited Quentin to come with her to New York, but he refused and realized that their paths were completely diverging. Having thrown earth over the “grave” of Margot’s past, they parted.

John Green

Paper cities

With gratitude to Julie Strauss-Gabel, without whom none of this would have happened.

Then we went outside and saw that she had already lit a candle; I really liked the face she carved out of the pumpkin: from a distance it seemed like sparks were sparkling in her eyes.

“Halloween”, Katrina Vandenberg, from the collection “Atlas”.

They say that a friend cannot destroy a friend.

What do they know about it?

From a song by the Mountain Goats.

My opinion is this: some miracle happens to every person in life. Well, that is, of course, it is unlikely that I will be struck by lightning, or I will receive a Nobel Prize, or I will become the dictator of a small nation living on some island in the Pacific Ocean, or I will contract incurable terminal ear cancer, or I will suddenly spontaneously combust. But, if you look at all these extraordinary phenomena together, most likely, at least something unlikely happens to everyone. I, for example, could get caught in a rain of frogs. Or land on Mars. Marry the Queen of England or hang out alone at sea for several months, on the brink of life and death. But something else happened to me. Among all the many residents of Florida, I happened to be Margot Roth Spiegelman's neighbor.

Jefferson Park, where I live, used to be a Navy base. But then it was no longer needed, and the land was returned to the ownership of the municipality of Orlando, Florida, and a huge residential area was built on the site of the base, because that is how the free land is now used. And in the end, my parents and Margot’s parents bought houses in the neighborhood as soon as the construction of the first buildings was completed. Margot and I were two years old at the time.

Even before Jefferson Park became Pleasantville, even before it became a Navy base, it actually belonged to one Jefferson, or rather, Dr. Jefferson Jefferson. An entire school in Orlando was named after Dr. Jefferson Jefferson, there is also a large charitable organization named after him, but the most interesting thing is that Dr. Jefferson Jefferson was not any “doctor”: incredible, but true. He sold orange juice all his life. And then he suddenly became rich and became an influential man. And then he went to court and changed his name: he put “Jefferson” in the middle, and wrote down the word “doctor” as the first name. And try to object.

So, Margot and I were nine. Our parents were friends, so she and I sometimes played together, riding our bikes past dead-end streets into Jefferson Park itself, the main attraction of our area.

When they told me that Margot would come soon, I was always terribly worried, because I considered her the most divine of God's creatures in the entire history of mankind. That very morning she was wearing white shorts and a pink T-shirt with a green dragon with orange sparkles coming out of its mouth. Now it’s difficult to explain why this T-shirt seemed so amazing to me that day.

Margot rode her bike standing, her straight arms clutching the steering wheel and her whole body hanging over it, her purple sneakers sparkling. It was in March, but the heat was already as hot as in a steam room. The sky was clear, but there was a sour taste in the air, indicating that a storm might break out in a while.

At that time, I fancied myself an inventor, and when Margot and I, having abandoned our bikes, went to the playground, I began to tell her that I was developing a “ringolator,” that is, a giant cannon that could shoot large colored stones, launching them circle around the Earth so that here we can become like on Saturn. (I still think it would be cool, but making a cannon that would launch stones into Earth orbit turns out to be quite difficult.)

I often visited this park and knew every corner of it well, so I soon felt that something strange had happened to this world, although I did not immediately notice what it was. exactly has changed in him.

Quentin,” Margot said quietly and calmly.

She was pointing somewhere with her finger. That's when I saw What not this way.

A few steps in front of us was an oak tree. Thick, knobby, terribly old. He always stood here. There was a platform on the right. She didn't show up today either. But there, leaning against a tree trunk, sat a man in a gray suit. He didn't move. This is what I saw for the first time. And a pool of blood spilled around him. Blood flowed from the mouth, although the stream had almost dried up. The man opened his mouth strangely. Flies sat quietly on his pale forehead.

I took two steps back. I remember that for some reason it seemed to me that if I suddenly made some sudden movement, he might wake up and attack me. What if it's a zombie? At that age I already knew that they don’t exist, but this dead man really looked like he might come to life at any moment.

And while I was taking these two steps back, Margot just as slowly and carefully stepped forward.

His eyes are open,” she stated.

“We have to go back home,” I answered.

“I thought they were dying with their eyes closed,” she continued.

Margon needs to go home and tell her parents.

She took another step forward. If she reached out her hand now, she could touch his leg.

What do you think happened to him? - she asked. - Maybe drugs or something like that.

I didn’t want to leave Margot alone with a corpse that could come to life and rush at her at any moment, but I also wasn’t able to stay there and discuss the circumstances of his death in the smallest detail. I plucked up my courage, stepped forward and grabbed her hand.

Margonado come home now!

“Okay, fine,” she agreed.

We ran to the bikes, my breath was taken away as if with delight, only it was not delight. We sat down, and I let Margot go ahead because I was bursting into tears and didn’t want her to see it. The soles of her purple sneakers were stained with blood. His blood. This dead guy.

And then we went home. My parents called 911, sirens blared in the distance, I asked permission to look at the cars, my mother refused. Then I went to bed.

My mom and dad are psychotherapists, so, by definition, I don’t have psychological problems. When I woke up, my mother and I had a long conversation about the life expectancy of a person, that death is also part of the life cycle, but at the age of nine I don’t have to think much about this phase, in general, I felt better. Honestly, I’ve never really thought about this topic. This says a lot, because in principle I know how to drive.

These are the facts: I came across a dead man. A cute little nine-year-old boy, that is me, and my even smaller and much cuter girlfriend found a dead man in the park bleeding from his mouth, and when we rushed home, my girlfriend’s cute little sneakers were covered in his very blood. Very dramatic, of course, and all that, but so what? I didn't know him. Every damn day people I don't know die. If every misfortune that happened in this world drove me to a nervous breakdown, I would have lost my mind long ago.

At nine in the evening I went to my room, getting ready to go to bed - according to schedule. Mom tucked me a blanket, said that she loved me, I told her “see you tomorrow”, she also told me “see you tomorrow”, turned off the light and closed the door so that only a small gap remained.

Turning on my side, I saw Margot Roth Spiegelman: she was standing on the street, literally pressing her nose to the window. I stood up, opened it, now we were separated only by a mosquito net, because of which it seemed that she had a small dot on her face.

“I conducted an investigation,” she said in a serious tone.

Although the mesh made it difficult to see her properly, I still saw in Margot’s hands a small notebook and a pencil with indentations from teeth near the eraser.

She looked at her notes:

Mrs. Feldman of Jefferson Court said his name was Robert Joyner. And that he lived on Jefferson Road in an apartment in a building with a grocery store. I went there and found a bunch of police officers, one of them asked, am I from the school newspaper, I answered that we don’t have our own newspaper at school, and he said that if I am not a journalist, then he can answer my questions. It turned out that Robert Joyner was thirty-six years old. He's a lawyer. I wasn't allowed into his apartment, but I went to his neighbor named Juanita Alvarez under the pretext that I wanted to borrow a glass of sugar from her, and she said that this Robert Joyner had shot himself with a pistol. I asked why, and it turned out that his wife wanted to divorce him and this upset him very much.

Pages: 232

Year of publication: 2013

Language:

Started reading: 259

Description:

From early childhood, Quentin Jacobsen was inflamed with secret feelings for his mysterious neighbor Margot Roth Spiegelman, the young man literally dreams of her. One night, a girl calls a school graduate to help her in a matter. Margot wants to punish several guys who offended her. The guy happily agrees to help the beautiful girl.
The day after their nightly adventure, Q comes to school, but her friend is not there. He learns that the girl has mysteriously disappeared, leaving only incomprehensible notes that can be used to find her hiding place among the vast Florida. The guy follows the trail left for him by a young beauty and unravels her secret messages. With the help of his friends, Q eventually finds Margot, but she turns out to be a completely different person. Will the guy be able to understand and love his young neighbor, who, as it turns out, is not at all who he took her for?

. July 23rd another film adaptation of his novel is coming out, and "Paper Towns" are the basis of the future tape.

https://youtu.be/rC2HPFBvWjE

• Name: Paper cities
• Original title: Paper Towns
• John Green
• Genre: Youth Romance, Romance, Detective
• Year: 2008

The plot centers on a rather mediocre schoolboy Q Jacobsen, who does not strive to be in the center of everyone's attention, content with a mediocre existence. He prefers routine and computer games to bright adventures. But everything changes when one night there is a knock on his window. Margo Roth Spiegelman- the sassy girl who lives next door, with whom Q is head over heels in love. Margot invites him to take part in a “punitive operation,” and this night becomes the brightest adventure of his life for the guy. But in the morning Margot disappears, and Q decides to find the girl at all costs, fortunately she left behind a chain of clues, after unraveling the secret of which, Q will be able to find Margot.

In general, the plot is quite prosaic and non-trivial, but the works John Green This is not why they are valuable. IN "Paper Towns" You won’t find the drama and emotional level that was present in , however, the book is just perfect for its audience. It reads easily and naturally. Vivid characters and dynamic events skillfully hold the reader's attention, allowing you to spend a cozy evening, following the development of events and trying, together with Q, to find a solution to Margot's mysterious messages.

In some moments, however, there are rather naive scenes with very strange actions of the main characters. But considering the target audience of the work, this drawback can easily be considered an advantage. School-age readers will really enjoy following the story.

In addition, the book contains a large amount of humor and very successful comparisons, in the spirit of the author! In the process of reading, every now and then an involuntary smile arises, and some moments I want to read out loud. And this happens quite often. At the same time, the narrative also raises social issues (as indicated by the title of the book in the context of the plot). Are material things important in a person’s life? Should we strive to achieve illusory conventions imposed by society? The work leaves these questions open so that the reader can draw the necessary conclusion for himself.

• Targeted mainly at teenage audiences
• Presence of illogical situations
• Sometimes strange behavior of characters

Validity of expectation:7 0%