2012
Miles Halter is sent to a boarding tertiary college. He is a shy young man who is fascinated by the last words of famous people. His father attended the same college and Miles has much to live up to: his father gained top marks and was also a quitter a rebel and trouble maker. Pranks were the order of the day.
He tries to fit in and is befriended by other teens who smoke, drink and are pretty good at pranks. He learns how to join in. This includes Alaska Young.
Alaska is a feisty young woman who lives on the edge and is also a huge fan of literature. She seems incredibly confident but she has the impression that she always messes up.
And then she really messes up big time. It takes her friends a while to realise that she left abruptly one evening because she had forgotten to put flowers on her mother’s grave. She always blames herself for her mother’s death, and believes that her father does too: as a young child she wasn’t able to call 911 when her mother collapsed at home. Other mistakes in life, she believes, stem from that one incident.
She is over the limit when she sets off and crashes her car into a stationery police car that is attending the site of an overturned lorry.
The head teacher of the school followed her and reported that she didn’t even swerve. It could have been suicide. That is never fully established.
Whatever has happened, the friends she’s left behind will never be the same again.
John Green really gets into the minds of these young adult and in particular into Miles’s.