Looking for Alaska
Before.
Miles "Pudge" Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (Francois Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.
After.
Nothing is ever the same.
I read this book in just over a day and I couldn't believe how emotionally attached I grew to the characters. Pudge is like a Holden Caulfield, a narrator that you cannot help but admire for his way with words. The end took me much longer to read, mostly because I could not stop the tears from flowing out of my eyes. Read this with tissues friends. You will love it but it will reach you in a way you will not expect.
"I thought: That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without."
and
"How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?"