Review: An Abundance of Katherines

An Abundance of Katherines 

(click for the Goodreads description)

It's often said that this is John Green's worst book, and, while I can see where the people who say this are coming from, I found myself utterly enjoying it. Still, if I have to be totally honest, that kind of happened after I gave it up somewhere around page ten, then picked it back up almost immediately because my TBR is already big enough (and seriously, how fair is it to judge a book by it's first ten  pages?).

An Abundance of Katherines revolves around teenage prodigy Colin Singleton, freshly out of high school and freshly dumped for the 19th time by a girl named Katherine. Because, as you might have noticed if you have already read that description, (and if you haven't, it's ok, I'm telling you right now anyway) Colin has a strange fetish (even if he might not see it as such) with girls named Katherine. So he's picked up off his bedroom floor (where he lies in all his broken-hearted glory) by his best friend and soon Colin finds himself on a road-trip to nowhere in particular in hopes of washing the sadness away. However, they only make it as far as the little, rural town of Gutshot, where they're offered a job, meet Lindsey Lee Wells, whose boyfriend also happens to be called Colin, and where our teenage prodigy finally has the Eureka moment that might or might not mean he's finally crossing the line between high school anagram-obsessed braniac and full-blown genius. Here, he's going to develop the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, that's going to get him the girl and the glory he's always wanted. Or maybe, just maybe, he's going to stumble upon something even grater.

What I loved most about this book is that, while Colin is definitely annoying, he's also strangely relatable. He spent a big part of his life being considered special, but also being told that, at the end of the day, he might not be special enough.

"And his dad's smile faded just a bit - the prodigy could read, but he could not see"

His father wanted him to be one of those rare teenage prodigies that made it and became geniuses, so he kept being pushed and pushed. It's not that he resents this, but you can see it while reading the story, you can sense his father's disappointment that his son hadn't done anything special before finishing high school. Moreover, there's Colin's own desire to prove himself, to show that he can leave his mark on the world. Having the Eureka moment I mentioned before was something he wanted all his life, and I can't help but fault his dad a bit for Colin's attitude, for his feeling of incompletion. I think this is an aspect of Colin's life everyone can relate to: his desire to be known, to live a legacy behind. His desire to never be forgotten.

 "Mommy, am I ever going to have a Eureka moment?"

 "I wanna have a Eureka moment," he said, the way another kid might have expressed longing for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

So here's your Colin Singleton:

 incapable of making friends

They weren't jealous. He just wasn't likeable.

dumped by Katherine after Katherine

He seemed to make an exception for Katherines: he always felt they would come back to him

needing to assured that he's smart enough, that he's loved enough.

You don't need a girlfriend, Colin. You need a robot who says nothing but "I love you"

And you have the privilege of seeing him growing a little bit into himself, of changing, of becoming a better person and a better friend. I really like his friendship with Hassan, of whom I said before was he's best friend. It's just the same as saying he is Colin's only friend (at least until Lindsey), but these two sentences don't necessarily contradict each other here. Hassan has a way of anchoring him in the reality. It's like he's permanently saying: "Get over yourself, dude. Be real". Hassan is on his own a really interesting character, who kind of deserves a book of his own. He's lazy, he's undisturbed by the idea of future and then, he grows a lot. All of them do. Lindsey included. All of them shift. And when you start to think this is just about them shifting, it becomes more and one character is forced to admit the truth she hides even from herself.

Like I've said, this is an awesome book. But it's not a book everyone would enjoy, and you kind of have to be in a mood to really get through it. However, if you're into slightly different Contemporary, than this is should be your next pick. Handle it with care.

Oh, and...

...favorite quote:

"You can love someone so much, but you can never love someone as much as you can miss them."

4.5/5