John Green - Paper Towns. John Green, "Paper Towns"

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.

Hello everyone, dear readers!

Yesterday, as I already told you, I went to the cinema to see a recently released film, that is, the new “Paper Towns”. I knew for a long time that this film was coming out, since this book by John Green, known as “The Fault in Our Stars,” was very popular everywhere. Going to this film, everyone had expectations that this film would not be inferior to such a deep and affecting film as “The Fault in Our Stars,” but alas, expectations were not met. "Paper Towns" - the film turned out to be much simpler than it seemed. So, let's proceed to the full analysis - Film "Paper Towns".

"Find me"

Brief plot of the film "Paper Towns":

School graduate Q Jacobsen has been secretly in love with his beautiful and sassy neighbor Margot Roth Spiegelmann since childhood. Therefore, when one night she invites him to take part in a “punitive operation” against her offenders, he agrees. But, arriving at school after their nightly adventure, Q learns that Margot has disappeared, leaving only mysterious messages for him that he must unravel in order to find the girl.

Getting acquainted with general information about the film:

Year: 2015.

Country: USA.

Genre: melodrama, adventure.

Duration: 109 minutes (1 hour 49 minutes)

Restrictions: 12+.

Actors, roles and characters in the film "Paper Towns":

In this section I describe several of my favorite main characters. In this film, of course, the most spectacular thing was that they took a famous model for the role, but the entire cast turned out to be good.

• Quentin (real name Nat Wolff) - The main character of this film, who has been in love since childhood. Quentin is not handsome, but he still played his role very well and convincingly. I think he’s still getting used to this role, since he’s still young - he’s 20 years old. He, of course, as an actor Nat is known from the same “The Fault in Our Stars”.

  
  

  
  

• Margo (real name - Cara Delevingne) - is also considered one of the main characters, although as for me, she is just a goal. She is also a very young actress - 22 years old, although as an actress - she is a model and I don’t understand what she does in acting!? (for me it has not yet revealed itself, has not shown itself). She has a big filmography planned for 2016, but for now she is known from the film “Anna Karenina”. Also this model who became famous for her eyebrows. In this film, she plays the role of Margot - a girl - a mystery - a riddle - a paper girl who thinks a lot, understands, is not afraid and does.

  
  

  
  

• Lacey (real name: Halston Sage) - Margot's friend plays in the film. I think she did a good job in her role, even though she didn't have much to do - just a few scenes. She is known as an actress in many comedies such as “Odnoklassniki”, “Neighbors. On the Warpath”, “For the First Time”.

  
  

  
  

• Ben (real name Austin Abrams) - funny boy throughout the film, Quentin's friend, a loser, looking for someone to go to prom with. Goes crazy about every beauty. He is not known at all, his filmography consists of literally 5 insignificant films, maybe after this film he will gain fame. Although here it partly seems to me that he simply played himself and is not suitable for complex roles.

  
  

  Here is my opinion about the actors from this film.

  Favorite quotes from the movie:

  A person is born a waterproof solid vessel. And then all sorts of nonsense happens: they abandon us, or cannot love us, or do not understand, and we do not understand them, and we lose, let down, offend each other. And our ship is cracking.

  Do you know what your problem is, Quentin? You keep expecting people to stop being who they are.

  By imagining the future, we can make it real. Or we can’t, but it’s still necessary to imagine the future.

  It is very difficult for another person to show us how we look from the outside, and it is difficult for us to show how we feel from the inside.

  Some miracle happens to every person in life.

  The film takes about an hour and a half in duration, which is quite enough to watch and the story does not drag on.

  the film is not just a drama, but, as for me, a comedy, a lot of different jokes and funny actions, the theme of love is touched upon only at the beginning and at the end, that is, in those places where Margot is present, the theme of friendship is touched upon a little, and everything else is just comedy.

  The film has good actors and deep thoughts. Interesting plot of the film about paper towns, good comparisons with people and their lives. There is depth in the film, there is something to think about.

  I’m glad that the film didn’t have a standard plot, that they met and were together, everything was cool and good, although it’s a pity, but I liked the unusual ending.

  the film is too similar to an ordinary, funny American comedy, so I took 1 point off and give it a 4.

A paper city for a paper girl, says Margot. - I first learned about Eeglo from a book of “interesting facts”, which I read when I was ten or eleven years old. And I constantly remembered him. To tell the truth, when I went to SunTrust, including our joint outing, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that everything was made of paper. I looked down and thought that I was paper myself.

This summer there was another premiere at the cinema based on John Green's bestseller "Paper Towns". The book actually had very mixed reviews: some sang its praises, others argued that it was second-rate literature aimed at teenagers, and the deeper meaning in it was more than far-fetched. Needless to say that after the film the judgments were very similar? Only criticism of the acting was added, and fan opinions were divided between “this is brilliant” and the crowning “it wasn’t like that in the book.” After the latter, the question of what happened in the book is of particular interest. Did John Green actually write something remarkable in these lines? After all, people were hooked by something about this book.

What is the book "Paper Towns" about?

Reviews of the book, as already mentioned, are very mixed. It is difficult to tell from them what happened in the popular novel. Every now and then the name of Margo Roth Spiegelman flashes among the opinions, but the ignorant cannot understand what the fans of “Paper Towns” are talking about. It is worth telling the plot briefly.

Plot

High school student and almost-graduate Q Jacobsen and the “queen of the school” Margot Roth Spiegelman are neighbors. As children, they often walked and were friends. But as they grew older, their opinions began to differ somewhat: the calm, cautious Q and the restless Margot, for whom there are no limits or barriers. At one point, their paths simply diverged - without any quarrels or arguments, it just happens. Many years have passed, and Margot Roth Spiegelman has become someone who is impossible not to notice, and Q has become (or remains?) just a freak, head over heels in love with his “queen”.

What is the climax?

One fine night, Margot climbs into Q’s window and offers him the most incredible adventure of his life - to punish and take revenge on her offenders. The couple makes their raid magnificently and ends the night on the highest floor of the tallest building in the city, where Margot Roth Spiegelman, in fact, utters the famous phrase that gives the book its name - "Paper Towns." The book has, as expected, contradictory reviews on this particular issue: there are those who admire the thoughtful “this is a paper town... paper people in paper houses,” and there are those who claim: in fact, this is the author, John Green , only gave his heroine a little pathos, but this does not speak at all about her wisdom, and indeed the wisdom of the book itself.

The climax is that the next morning Margot Roth Spiegelman disappears. Well, knight Q Jacobsen decides to nobly find her. The book “Paper Towns” itself can tell you how it all ends.

Reviews

John Michael Green's book, in principle, is gripping with its plot - it has the intrigue that is so necessary so that the reader does not get bored. Curious characters. A couple of fun secondary characters. Claim for wise thoughts.

What do readers think about all this?

Reviews of the book Paper Towns assure that the book is good for the demographic for which it was written: school-age teenagers will enjoy the humor inserted into place and somewhat naive situations that surprise older readers.

Reviewers pay much attention to how the author constructed the ending. It can safely be called open: John Green does not pose direct questions, he is thought-provoking, and the reader becomes interested in finding the answers himself.

This style is not alien to Green: a similar thing can be seen in the less famous “Looking for Alaska.”

Advantages

“Paper Cities” is a book whose reviews are as interesting to read as the work itself. Its advantages are called a simple style - this book is light, you can read it overnight and be satisfied with such a valuable acquisition. Also, high-quality humor, which, by the way, is in abundance, and an unhackneyed plot are taken as merits. This is the honest truth: in “Paper Towns” there are no clichés either in terms of events or characters, which is very pleasing. After all, this is modern prose, and it is sometimes difficult for young authors to resist using what has already been time-tested.

Flaws

Unfortunately, the advantages, which are such because they are suitable for a teenage audience, come down to precisely this drawback - a narrow age category. For young readers, John Michael Green's book "Paper Towns" is too full of adult events, they will not understand it; for adults it is naive and simple-minded. This also causes an illogical sequence of events, and sometimes even strange behavior of the characters.

On average, a book is given a score of about 6-7 points out of a possible ten.

Positive opinions

Many people read “Paper Towns” after the sensational “The Fault in Our Stars” and received equally vivid impressions, although the books are essentially different. Rave reviews are often directed towards Margot Roth Spiegelman - an unusual heroine in contrast to the ordinary Q Jacobson. Readers assure that the book is ideal for fans of romance, adventure and detective novels.

It's no surprise that many of the "Cities" fans are girls. They fell in love with their insight and philosophical overtones. Loving mysteries, they happily accepted the understatement in the finale.

In our crazy high-speed world, the advantages of the work include its small volume. This is exactly what some reviews say.

"Paper Towns" (John Green) is a fairly popular book, so there were many reviews and opinions on it. Readers assure that the book can be called very kind; it makes you think about your attitude towards your loved ones, towards the world, towards the notorious stereotypical rules of society.

The moral of this story is...

There are several main takeaways that come to the fore after reading the book.

Firstly, the one that Margot Roth Spiegelman herself asks, speaking about her worldview - she calls everything paper, and the reader thinks: maybe it really is paper? Maybe he himself is paper?

Secondly, the one that arises immediately after the finale: stereotypes, what are they? What boundaries have we come to terms with long ago? Maybe it's time to let go of these stupid rules?

Thirdly, the one that appears after some reflection on the work "Paper Towns" (John Green). Reviews of the book do not always take this conclusion into account. And it lies in this: if you run faster, you still won’t be able to escape. Wasn't Margot's attempt to escape to an immediately adult (in her understanding) version of herself more than stupid? Didn’t she build her own instead of the illusions of this world that she didn’t like, which in reality is no better?

Fourthly, the one that is least noticeable among the reviews: the problem of idealizing the image of the “queen” Margot Roth Spiegelman. Quentin (Q) Jacobsen made her an idol, and fans of “Paper Towns” also include her there. This is wrong, because the author himself points out in the finale how important it is to see not the image of a person created in your head, but to try to discern the true essence. It is always easier to love fiction, giving the character any qualities you like. Such an ideal. And the problem of such illusory love, which is important, is relevant not only for teenagers, but also in adulthood. Moreover, the older a person is, the more painful it is for him to give up such a habit.

Negative opinions

The intricacies of the light and the complex, the insignificant and the serious - that’s what the book “Paper Towns” is all about. It has not only good reviews. Those who did not like the work found enough shortcomings in it.

It is argued that despite the fact that John Green's books are called "life-changing", in reality they are not. Margot is too perfect, Quentin is too ordinary.

The meaning in the work is obscured by the too vulgar and vulgar conversations of friends and comrades, who do not seem to feel an ounce of shame for the things they said.

The plot eventually becomes so muddled that the ending is not so much open and unsaid as it is unconvincing. The character should not closely correlate with the reader, but it should be written in such a way that the hero’s choice can be understood, even if everyone else in the work could not understand and accept it. Green's light syllable did not cope with this task.

There are also complaints about the syllable to the author. "Paper Towns" is a book whose reviews always begin with how the author writes. And not everyone is happy with his simple style. In addition, some even complain that in the middle the work, instead of being exciting, becomes monotonous and boring. This suggests that John Green failed to make the transition from light to serious successfully.

Is there a consensus?

Unfortunately, no, there is no consensus. The book "Paper Towns" (John Green) has received mixed reviews from customers. As always: some lemons, some lemon boxes. And for every person who puts “Paper Towns” on the altar, there will be someone who would prefer to throw it away and write off that their money and time were wasted. Well, to form your own opinion, you just have to read it!

Still from the film “Paper Towns” (2015)

Very briefly

A high school student in love with his neighbor who ran away from home is looking for the 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. Quentin began to feel as if 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 Margot 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.

. 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%